


JGCU Prompt Fills

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Deep Cover - Fandom, Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies), Nine Months (1995), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension (1984), The Big Chill (1983), Transylvania 6-5000 (1985)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-09-01 07:22:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 24,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16760575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Prompt fills for various random/underappreciated Jeff Goldblum characters.A running list will be kept in the notes of which chapters are for which characters, to make it easier to find what you want if you're just into one or two. Feel free to hit me up if you want to prompt something with a fave! I reblog different prompt lists at different times, but I am always up to write quick ficlets about... pretty much anything.(prompts don't have to be shippy but I mean I have many ships)





	1. Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter One- Deep Cover  
> Chapter Two- Buckaroo Banzai  
> Chapter Three- Transylvania 6-5000  
> Chapter Four- Buckaroo Banzai  
> Chapter Five- Transylvania 6-5000  
> Chapter Six- Deep Cover  
> Chapter Seven- Buckaroo Banzai  
> Chapter Eight- Nine Months  
> Chapter Nine- Buckaroo Banzai  
> Chapter Ten- The Big Chill  
> Chapter Eleven- The Big Chill  
> Chapter Twelve- Jurassic Park  
> Chapter Thirteen- The Big Chill  
> Chapter Fourteen- The Big Chill  
> Chapter Fifteen- The Big Chill  
> Chapter Sixteen- The Big Chill  
> Chapter Seventeen- Transylvania 6-5000  
> Chapter Eighteen- The Big Chill  
> Chapter Nineteen- The Big Chill  
> Chapter Twenty- Buckaroo Banzai  
> Chapter Twenty-One- The Big Chill  
> Chapter Twenty-Two- The Big Chill

“It’s three in the morning.” David groans. “I’m not getting it. Whoever it is can try to murder us during fucking… working hours.”

“You want to go tell them that?”

John sounds remarkably chipper for three in the morning. John looks _amused_ by all this, by David’s misery. By the angry pounding at the door, which the neighbors will surely complain about.

“Yeah, how about I just answer the door like this? Oh, wait, I can’t.” He rolls his eyes, giving an aborted gesture that has the handcuffs jangling.

“Sure you can. You’re not attached to the bed. You can go wherever you want.”

“You go.” David flops over, pressing his face into the pillow. “Take a gun. Wait– uncuff me first. Uncuff me and give me a gun and then you go get the door.”

John, John laughs at him. Leans over him to unlock the handcuffs. They’re standard issue, he’s not sure exactly how he fell asleep in them, they aren’t exactly cozy. Except he’d been out of it the night before… out of it enough to not want to be uncuffed. Now, though, now there’s someone angrily pounding at the front door, and David is naked and just out of handcuffs and his mouth is dry and he feels too sluggish to deal with this.

“I’ll go.” John says, giving David’s thigh a smack before rolling out of bed. David watches him pull on pants, get his gun looked over and loaded. Serious now, all business, until he flashes David a look. “But you owe me. Next time this is your job.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He rolls back over. “Next time.”

It won’t be. He doesn’t think, anyway. John’s better with this stuff, John’s a better shot, John… John doesn’t roll over and show his belly or lose his cool and escalate things, he handles them. That’s why… that’s why John’s the guy in charge and David is the guy who sometimes wakes up naked in handcuffs. And honestly, if being in charge means answering the door at three in the fucking morning, David is real comfortable being the guy in the handcuffs. Wasn’t at first, maybe. Wasn’t comfortable with the ‘naked’ part, wasn’t… wasn’t real comfortable with a lot, but the handcuffs are…

Well.

It’s only about five minutes and zero gunshots, before John comes back to bed.

“Do I need to worry?” David asks blearily.

“I’ll tell you what to worry about in the morning.” John says. And he might.


	2. Closet Nerds

“Sometimes, being a complete nerd comes in handy.” Tommy says, utterly deadpan except for the twinkle in his eye– and the fact that his chin is on Sidney’s shoulder.

“Oh, you making fun of your rescue now?” Sidney laughs softly, getting the ropes out of the way first, before examining the door they’re locked behind.

“Would I do that?” Tommy asks, a hand over his heart, expression almost serious for a second, until Sidney quirks his eyebrow. “Would I do that if I didn’t like you?”

“Tommy should talk about being a complete nerd, you know what Tommy does for fun?” Reno pipes up.

“Shut up, man, leave me my mystique. New Jersey still thinks I’m cool.”

“Math puzzles.”

“I really wish you hadn’t been kidnapped with us.” Tommy groans.

“Yeah, I wish that, too.” He rolls his eyes. “Tommy’s got the team record on solving the Rubik’s cube.”

“What, really?” Sidney’s attention breaks from the door.

“Six seconds.” Tommy admits. “You think the three of us could bust that door down?”  
  
  
Sidney knocks at it, frowning just briefly. “I don’t think so. I couldn’t– think we’d just hurt ourselves, it’s barred on the other side, I think. Six seconds?”

“Not bad for a pretty boy.” He shrugs. “Could handle the locks being on the other side if the hinges were on this one, but if there’s nothing I can take apart, our options are smash through or wait around for someone else– and I don’t really want to wait around for someone else, do you fellas?”

“We could send you through the vent.” Reno slaps Tommy’s shoulder, pointing to it. “Think a man could fit through that.”

“Could your ass fit through there?” Tommy grouses. “My shoulders’re too broad, man.”

“I can do it.” Sidney volunteers.

“What, no you can’t, you–”

“Dislocated my shoulder to get us untied. So I should be able to.”

“What? You didn’t even _flinch_ , you–” Tommy leans in taking a closer look. “Glad that’s not the side I was leaning on, when’d you do that?”

“When you and Reno were busy blaming each other for getting us all captured in the first place.” He grins.

“Okay, take this, hot-shot.” Tommy digs out a lockpick, handing it over with a wink.

“I don’t– I mean… I know how to get out of ropes, uh, straight jackets, handcuffs, but I can’t–”

“I’ll talk you through it, then. Or you could knock a guy out and get the key, your choice.”

“We’ll see.” Sidney accepts the lockpick, hand lingering on Tommy’s a moment, until Reno coughs. “Um– maybe once I get us out of here, you can help me, ah, pop this shoulder back into place. Hold onto my hat?”

“Sure, sure. I can do that for you. You know, Sid–”

“You can flirt when we’re out of this damn closet.” Reno rolls his eyes– rolls them a little harder when Tommy snorts.

“Sure we can.” He says under his breath, setting Sidney’s hat on his own head and leaning back to enjoy the view as Sidney gets down to work his way into the vent. He doesn’t have the view for long, but it’s long enough for Reno to elbow him in the ribs.

Tommy moves to the door, at the sound of the bar being lifted and a chain being slid out of place. Faster than he’d have imagined, he wouldn’t have thought the vent would provide such a direct route– or that Sidney would slither through it so fast with one shoulder out of commission just to allow him to fit. And how many locks exactly did Xan’s goons want between the three of them and the outside world?

“Sidney?” He calls. There’s a long pause.

“He’s not with you?” Buckaroo calls back. The door swings open. “Got the keys off the guard. Where’s New Jersey?”

“Stuck.” Sidney’s voice echoes from within the vent, just a few feet from the closet. “Can’t get the cover off, I don’t have the leverage.”

“Sid?” Buckaroo drops into a crouch. “How’d you fit in there?”

“Well, see… ha, it’s a– See, I dislocated my shoulder to get us untied, back in the closet…” The lockpick emerges, between the slats of the vent cover. “Take it I won’t need this?”

Tommy joins Buckaroo, taking the pick back, and helping to get the vent open. The two of them pull Sidney out and get him on his feet– and get his shoulder popped back into its socket, something he barely winces over. 

“You got a good story about how you learned to do that without flinching?” Tommy asks, leaning in towards him. He looks nothing but pleased with himself when Sidney takes his hat back.

“Maybe we better save that story for once we’re out of here. But, uh… sure. I’ll tell you all about it. If you show me that six second record of yours.”

“He’s actually impressed by that Rubik’s cube thing.” Reno explains, catching Buckaroo’s puzzled expression. “I didn’t think I was playing matchmaker when I brought it up.

“Sometimes,” Sidney grins. “Being a complete nerd comes in handy.”


	3. Animal Instincts

“Why are you whispering?” Jack leans away from Gil. “We– we’re in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, what exactly are you accomplishing, aside from tickling my ear?”

“Sorry.” Gil whispers. “I just… If we found something–”

“We’re not going to, but go on. Our talking at normal volume would jeopardize this delicate investigation?”

“Well…” He licks his lips and leans in closer again. “You really don’t think we’ll find anything?”

“Do we ever?”

“Jack, if this was the _one time_ …”

There’s just a hint of a whine in that whisper, but he’s still so soft, his lips still right up against Jack’s ear, and Jack is only human. Jack can’t be asked to be alone in the woods with the man, pressed close, lips at his ear, moonlight, crickets, everything, and not feel something.

He’s used to feeling something. He’s also used to tamping that feeling down. It doesn’t lead anywhere he needs to go. Well… No. It really doesn’t. It leads somewhere he really needs to stop going, but Gil…

Gil’s so…

Soft. Sweet.

Easy.

He knows exactly how to make Gil crumble for him, exactly how to get him whimpering and shivery and agreeable, he just… he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t… run his fingers through Gil’s hair, even though it’s like silk and Gil melts at the first touch, shouldn’t kiss him no matter how nice the noises he makes are or the way he clings on tight when he kisses back, the desperation so easily riled and soothed, he shouldn’t…

He shouldn’t want him, but he does. And Gil… he’d think Gil would get tired eventually. Sick of being jerked around, of being convenient, he would have every right to feel that way. Not because Jack means to. Gil is his friend before anything else, and maybe he’s short with him sometimes, but he’s not… he likes to think he’s not cruel. He wouldn’t jerk him around, it’s just… He shouldn’t want him, and he wants him so much, he denies himself until he breaks and then it’s just Gil, Gil in his arms, Gil under his lips, Gil… laid out all warm and willing. Jack can’t say no to that. Not every single time he ought to.

“If something actually happens, I owe you. What, what do you want to collect?” He shifts a little, finds his hand was already resting on Gil’s waist. Now he has both hands on Gil’s hips, and Gil casts him an uncertain, hopeful kind of a look.

“Anything?”

“Anything.” Jack whispers, smiling against Gil’s ear when he feels the way Gil grabs onto his jacket. _Tight_. Feels the way his breath quickens, and there’s very little risk now of Gil demanding Jack pay for dinner or treat him to a drink or hand over five bucks instead of skipping straight to something far more _personally_ satisfying. “Anything you want.”

“Oh… Oh, Jack– but what if you, I mean… what if I owe you?”

“Well then I guess I collect what I want.”

Gil pulls back a little, though it doesn’t feel like space between them is what he wants. But he meets Jack’s eyes and every star out there is reflected in his, and Jack knows, logically, that eyes are just adjusted to the dark, but he can’t help a little knee jerk reaction to his pupils so wide.

“What if we want the same thing?” Gil asks, and his voice is still whisper-soft, tremulous.

“Then maybe we forget about the bet and call it a night, and we can both get what we want.”

“Maybe tomorrow’s a better night for the investigation.” He nods, and he sways forward, pulls back just before Jack can kiss him. “You would really rather– I mean, me? And not that girl you–”

“I’d really rather. Yes, you. No, not any girl. I’ll prove it, Gil, just– You. So let’s go. Let’s go back to the motel. Let’s go.” He pleads, chasing after Gil and nuzzling at his jaw. “You know that thing’s probably a hyena or something that escaped from that godforsaken roadside zoo we drove past. It’s not remotely supernatural, but it is dangerous and I don’t want you running into it in the dark, so let’s, let’s go to bed.”

“You really think?” Gil sounds disappointed but accepting, for once. “Well no, I guess I don’t want us running into it even in daylight if that’s all it is. I guess we can talk to the zoo people…”

“I don’t think they’d tell us the truth. But someone else might. I know it’s not the story you wanted, but ‘unsafe roadside zoos flood rural USA with dangerous animals’, still a good headline, right?”

Jack thinks it’s a little too sensational, honestly, but he thinks a story about the dangers of improperly kept wild animals is better than most of what they run. Some mangy, half-starved predator skulking around the woods near some small mountain town’s elementary school is a mental image he’d like to put in the heads of every idiot thinking about bringing home a creature they can in no way properly keep. Not that he thinks many of those people read their paper…

“Well, I think so.” Gil nods, and he angles right back in to be kissed. “Okay, Jack, take me to bed.”

He shouldn’t, sure. But he wants to… and he will.


	4. Survey Says

“How did you fail a survey?” Sidney asks, sidling into the loose huddle. Whatever the joke is exactly, Tommy is good-naturedly playing the butt of it, pretending to scowl while the fellas laugh, little hint of a smile peeking through.

“I didn’t fail. Can’t fail at having my own opinion.” He says. “Reno’s just making fun.”

“Oh, he does that.”

“Because he knows I have taste.” Tommy adds, making Reno snort and double over.

“That what you want to call it?”

“And you designed a bad survey.”

“Hey now, you’re the one decided to answer despite having a clear lack of opinion.”

“Well that should’ve been an option. Otherwise a guy feels left out.”

“You can’t make up an answer that’s not part of the survey, throwing off all my data.”

“… This is for something? I thought we were just screwing around.”

“We are, but I still care about my data.”

“You can take the boy out of the think tank…” Tommy shrugs, sliding his arm around Sidney. “C’mon, Cowboy, unless you got a pressing opinion about Bananarama, you might have more fun with me.”

“I don’t know what that is.” Sidney blinks. And the guys laugh when he says it, but they’re not mean.

“That’s what I thought you’d say.” Tommy shakes his head. “It’s a band– not really your kind of music, but if you’re curious, just turn on MTV and wait ten minutes.”

Sidney lets Tommy steer him off from the group, enjoying the contact maybe a shade too much.

“I’d’ve thought you’d, uh, have opinions on a survey about music.”

“Survey was about girl groups, not music.”

“I mean it’s still mu– oh. About the girls, and not the music. Ah, yeah, well I can, uh, I can see.”

“So I said to Reno, there oughta be some options for men. And he said first of all it’d just be me and Mrs. Johnson picking those, second of all he wouldn’t know which men are even good-looking, third of all I was thinking too much about it considering they started the whole conversation before I came in the room and it was supposed to be just some kinda bull session guy talk. When I said he had to have enough of an idea to throw one in, he pointed out if he had to come up with a good-looking guy in music off the top of his head, he’d come up with me, so… I guess I can’t be mad at him. But I’m not vain enough to want to pick myself out of a survey on sex appeal. Unless someone important’s counting the data.”

“Oh– well, I mean, I would–” Sidney starts, cutting himself off and ducking his head. “I just– uh, haha, you know. It wouldn’t only be you and Mrs. Johnson. If it was more a proper, proper survey.”

“Sure.” Tommy smiles, arm loosening a little so that he can shift around to face Sidney. “Who would you throw in a vote for?”

“Oh– well– _you_.”

“You don’t have to pick me just because Reno couldn’t think of anyone else, Sidney, you can come up with anybody.” He says gently. It’s an out, but there’s something in his eyes, something in the way he holds himself. Something about him that rests fully on this moment.

“Yeah, but why would I?”

The tension drains out of him, and he leans in close, until his lips are maybe two inches from Sidney’s, one hand against his chest, palm flat over Sidney’s now-rapidly beating heart.

“Careful, Cowboy…” He chuckles. Licks his lips. “Flattery will get you everywhere with me.”

“Everywhere sounds nice.” Sidney sighs, melting just a little and not particularly caring that he’s melting out in an open corridor. “I’ve never been everywhere with an astonishingly handsome man before.”


	5. Socks

“Oh, you’ve started stealing my socks now?”

Jack winces, caught red-handed as he is, sitting on the edge of the bed with Gil’s navy grid-patterned socks in hand. “There’s a normal explanation for this.”

“Oho, how the tables have turned.” Gil crows. “You’re stealing my socks, Jack. You _like_ me.”

“Why would me _borrowing_ socks from you mean I– I mean, of course I– But–” Jack sputters. “You know I can’t wear socks that aren’t a perfect match!”

Gil nods. This is a matter of course. He understands Jack’s needs as well as he understands his own, and one of them is that mismatched socks drive him crazy. Even if they’re the same sock, essentially, a different level of wear from two different pairs out of the same package is something Jack finds noticeable and irritating. Jack, poor thing, has always been too easily irritated by the small things… it tends to make him snappish, when he doesn’t mean to be. But where Jack’s socks might seem to all match, ninety percent of them coming from identical packages of either white athletic or black dress socks, Gil had pairs in argyle and plaid and grids and dots, socks you knew at a glance were either a perfect match or not at all.

“Well my socks keep not coming back as pairs.” He explains. “So I’ve been cycling through wearing and airing out the ones I have until laundry day, except then we got sent on assignment after assignment and now I refuse to re-wear my socks one more time until they get washed. But it’s freezing outside, so I can’t not wear socks, so– It’s got nothing to do with how much I like you.”

“But you do like me.” Gil presses, leaning forward.

“I hope you know how ridiculous you’re being right now.”

“You like me so much you want to borrow my socks to feel closer to me, that’s sweet.”

“I told you why I borrowed the socks, Gil.” He sighs, tugging them on.

“But you wouldn’t borrow socks from just anybody.”

“No, I’d have a very difficult time accessing someone else’s sock drawer, probably.”

“And you do feel close to me.” Gil grins. “I mean, you might even say we’re–”

“Don’t say it.” Jack groans, but he’s too late.

“Sole mates.”

“You deserve to be punished for that one.”

“By having my socks confiscated?”

“I have a perfectly good reason for borrowing them and tomorrow is laundry day and hopefully I won’t lose any more of _my_ socks and we can go back to normal without any of this nonsense about sentimental, uh, sentimental sock thievery.”

“ _Jack_ …” Gil whines out a protest and flops forward, bending at the waist so that he can lean against Jack’s shoulder. “But you _like_ me.”

Jack sighs, turning his head to nuzzle at Gil’s hair, kissing at him until he stops projecting that pleading air so strongly.

“ _Gil_. No. We’ve been married for twenty five years. I don’t ‘like’ you. I _love_ you. Happy?”

“Yes, Jack. You can borrow my socks whenever you need to, you know…” Gil nuzzles back, toying with the buttons of Jack’s shirt. “Jack?”

“Yes?”

“I think you ought to know what the sight of you in my socks does to me.”


	6. Partners

“You’re going to get yourself hurt.” John cautions.

They’re in David’s office, David sitting at his desk. And John… John is leaning over his shoulder, and if any other man was whispering in his ear like this, maybe they would have a problem, because it’s a little close for comfort and David likes a little personal space as a rule, doesn’t… isn’t comfortable being touched. Not too much, not by… not by men he doesn’t know well.

But this is John’s hand heavy on his shoulder and John’s breath warm against his ear, and John’s tone so steady and voice so low that David feels as if he’s being put under hypnosis.

“I’m all right. I’ll be all right.” He says, but he doesn’t get snippy, not with John.

“Look, we’re partners, aren’t we?”

“Yes, John.” He nods a little, bites back half the things that try to spill out of him. Ever since Ivy, partners, equal partners. If it had been David that night, maybe he’d have gotten himself hurt. Maybe he’d have gotten himself killed. But he doesn’t do those parts of the job– John handles those things, and David lets him, and lets him reward himself a little more heavily from their take, when he’s put in the dirty work. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. He could insist on their taking equal profits as equal partners, but when John’s doing the work, he thinks it’s only fair. Besides… David is established, David has his house and his nice things, and John has had to catch up. It feels fair if sometimes he pays John out a little more heavily than he does himself. Besides… John’s made this his full-time job. Whatever he did before, it wasn’t as lucrative or it wasn’t as interesting or he wasn’t as good at juggling the two, he guesses.

“Okay, _partner_. So you know I’m looking out for you, right?”

David feels a shiver run up his spine, but he doesn’t react to it, he doesn’t let it show. He just nods, slow and steady.

“I want you to let me handle things. You’re starting to crack, baby, and we can’t have that.”

Do friends call each other ‘baby’? David doesn’t know. David doesn’t know anything, has never, will never, beyond this single, sterling moment.

“I’m not going to crack on you.” He says. “I’m your partner, you can, you can trust me, I’m, I’ll have your back.”

“No, you’re _not_ going to crack on me.” John agrees. “You know why?”

“Because if I crack, I’ll get hurt.”

“Yeah. That’s a best case scenario. Now. What are you going to do tomorrow night? At the party?”

“Let you handle things.” David says dutifully, feels the hand on his shoulder squeeze down just gently. “Not crack.”

“That’s right.” John straightens up. The hand falls away. David should feel relieved– conversation over, John trusts him to handle himself. He doesn’t know what he feels, but it isn’t relief. “Don’t let anything get under your skin. You give me the signal if you think you’re getting too wound up, tag me in, and I will handle the situation. That’s what we do, right?”

“Right.” He looks up at John. It feels comfortable, to be in his chair in his office, to have to tilt his head back to look up at John, John leaning one hip against his desk, too precise and careful to ruffle the papers there. “Partner.”

John smiles. That, too, is precise. Precise, but never cold– not this particular smile. This one is for David alone, this very specific curve of the lips, and he can hear the question before John even asks it, starts laughing softly before he’s finished. He doesn’t have an answer, he’s never had an answer. But answers aren’t the point, not honest ones. The point is in the way he scratches his neck and shrugs and laughs when John teases, in the way he jokes back, in the way John grins when he does, with a vicious edge to the twist of his mouth and a personal warmth in the twinkle of his eyes. There are things he can’t decipher, in John’s eyes and in his smile and in the treacherous slither of his own insides in response. Maybe there are things he won’t decipher. Maybe if he tried he would crack, and if he cracks, he gets himself hurt or he gets himself killed, or worse, he brings that down on John.

His partner.

So he doesn’t prod at the way his chest swells when a riposte has John half doubling over laughing. These are things it’s best left to John to understand, and to decide what to do about.


	7. Worry

“It’s not your job to protect me.” Sidney says. And he’s a lot less put out about having to say it than he could be, Tommy’s aware, but…

It was different, when it actually was someone’s job to protect him. For starters, they hardly knew each other yet, and beyond that, well hell… he’d been in good hands if he was with Reno or with Buckaroo, Tommy didn’t need to be with him. Didn’t need to worry about him for a moment– well, not too much.

But now, Sidney’s a full-fledged member of the team, who doesn’t need his hand held, and while it’s not like there won’t be people watching his back in the field, it…

It’s just different, it’s different, and Tommy doesn’t like it.

Not that it matters whether or not he likes it… it is what it is, and Sidney has a point.

“If something happened to you…” He mumbles, scuffing at the floor, staring down at his feet. The toes of Sidney’s boots edge into his field of vision, and a warm, steady hand comes to rest at his hip.

“I’ll be careful. I know what I’m doing now. I won’t be alone. But you don’t have to worry about me so much.”

Tommy reaches up, wrapping his hand around the back of Sidney’s neck and ducking in under the brim of his hat, pausing. They’re just about nose-to-nose, it would be so easy to kiss him, he was just about to kiss him. They’ve danced around it. They haven’t exactly taken the leap. Maybe now is as good a time as any.

“I’m gonna worry.” He whispers.

It’s Sidney who closes the gap. Sidney, his lips soft, tentative for just a moment before he relaxes into it. Before they relax into each other.

By the time they separate, they’ve wrapped their arms around each other. Sidney has very nice arms to be wrapped up in, a nice chest to be pressed up against, lean next to Tommy, but all whipcord muscle. The time he’s spent with them, he’s honed himself, and he wasn’t anything to sneeze at before, either.

“You think I don’t worry? Because I do. And you’ve been doing this a lot longer than I have. Worry’s just… something to deal with.”

“Never really worried about someone before.” Tommy shrugs. “Not like this. Guess when I came on board, everyone knew what they were doing and I was the guy who needed someone to keep an eye on him until he settled in. Didn’t have to worry about anyone. But you, you go out on ops, and you… It’s not that you don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re not like the other guys.”

“Oh? Because I’m still the newest member of the team, or because you don’t kiss the other guys like that?” Sidney teases.

“Because you’re a doctor.” Tommy leans in again, kissing his jaw.

“Buckaroo’s a doctor.”

“Yeah, but he’s… he’s Buckaroo Banzai. And you… you’re Sidney Zweibel. And you’re a real sweet guy, and you can stomach a lot of gory business, man, but blood’s not the same as violence, you know? And seeing it’s different from doling it out. And other humans are different from aliens. And every time you’re out there, I just… I don’t only worry about you getting hurt.” He admits. “I worry about the day you do something that eats at you.”

“Does it eat at you?”

“Not this. Not Xan and his whole… not any of them. But I’ve got stuff in my past that does. And everybody’s got a different thing that’d do it… it’s not always something you can predict. So I’m gonna worry.”

“The stuff I’ve had to do so far, I’ve handled. Done okay with a gun. I mean… maybe it’d eat at me, if I shot some guy robbing a bank, who might’ve been anybody. Who might have been desperate, who might not have ever loaded his gun. If he died it’d eat at me. When a terrorist is shooting at me, and it’s a matter of saving maybe a few hundred lives, it doesn’t eat at me. I figure.. if I did shoot him and it was bad, I’d be able to patch him up enough to see his day in court, or… I dunno.”

Tommy smiles, kissing him again. “That’s a practical way of looking at it. Guess there’s no guilt necessary if you can do that.”

“Well. If I ever have to. Worse comes to worse, I could patch me up, as long as I’m conscious and my hands are working. If anything I should worry about you when we’re not together.”

“Sure, sure. Look, I wouldn’t complain if we just… team up whenever we can. No worrying when we’ve got each other’s backs, right?”

“Right. If it works out that way, it works out. I wouldn’t complain, either.” Sidney holds on a little bit tighter. “But you gotta be okay when it doesn’t. I appreciate the sentiment, Tommy… but I’m, uh, I’m going to see some pretty rough stuff with or without you, and… Whatever does happen, you just… Worry if you, if you’ve got to, I guess, but don’t feel like you ought to be doing more.”

“Don’t know if I can help that, either.”

Sidney takes his hat off, setting it on Tommy’s head with a grin.

“Trust me.” He cups his cheek, only to grin and blush when Tommy turns slightly, kissing the heel of his hand.

“I trust you. It’s the World Crime League I don’t trust.”

“… Probably a good policy. But trust me. I’m okay. And I will be okay.”

“Sure.” Tommy covers Sidney’s hand with his own. “Look, I’m gonna worry. I’m gonna want to protect you. But that’s mine to deal with, I’ll deal with it. But hey… look… today, neither of us is busy, right?”

“Guess not.” Sidney’s grin about doubles. “Lead the way.”


	8. What a Lovely Way of Saying How Much You Love Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Technically from the kink meme on DW now and not LJ, but keeping them here anyway-- this one is Sean/Sam and a pregnancy kink (no actual pregnancy!)

“We don’t need that, do we?” Sam asks, interrupting Sean reaching for the condoms stashed in the nightstand.

“We do not.” He smiles, dropping the box back into the drawer and returning to lie over him. “You want me to make a mess of you?”

“I want you to--” He stops, bites his lip. Nods a little, that flutter of the eyelashes that isn’t at all a put-on thing with him. “Yes.”

“Whatever my baby wants, my baby gets.” Sean promises, kissing him deeply. Feeling that perfect total give in him, the way he surrenders everything he has so readily… the soft little sound he makes as he shifts a little, until he’s relaxed and open, relaxed and ready to be opened.

“And come in me…” Sam adds at last. Needed that little bit more to relax him enough to ask, and, well, Sean wouldn’t wonder… he’s got a nervous pet, one that requires a delicate touch sometimes, a lot of work. But oh, it is _rewarding_ , to see him voice those desires when he’d been tongue tied a moment before. To know that he’s put at ease by Sean’s touch, Sean’s kisses, Sean’s voice in his ear.

“Oh, baby, I’m gonna… You look so…” He pauses, chuckling as he gives Sam a little once-over. It’s a dark, promising sound, one that never fails to bring a reaction to the surface. “You look so pretty and clean. How could I resist making a mess out of you now?”

The first time he’d explained the ins and outs of anal sex, preparation beyond just a little easing and lubing, the things that were optional possibilities and the things that were absolutely not optional-- or not for him-- the poor boy had been so embarrassed just listening to the words that Sean thought they’d never wind up doing any of it.

That would have been fine, of course. Between the way Sam sucks cock and the kinks and the fact that he just hasn’t ever felt like this about anyone else, that would have been fine. But Sam had asked him again to just talk him through it, and then to show him, and then to do everything, oh, every little thing…

He’d been maroon in the face with embarrassment when they’d started, trembling a little but begging Sean to continue, and what a rush that had been… Asked if he shouldn’t be face down, but Sean had wanted to see his face, needed to see his face. Had to be sure that there was no line crossed between the kind of embarrassment that could be soothed and turned to desire and the kind that would spoil things, that no discomfort turned painful… Well, and that first time, it had only been a gentle external cleaning and play, light touches, no penetration. Just to see if he liked it enough to want to try more, and he’d reacted like no one else, he really had. And from there, well, once he knew how much he liked it, he was so ready to try all the rest, and with that came the full warm water enema, and as mortified as Sam had been for his first time with that, too, now…

Hell, Sean wouldn’t call it his favorite part, but if he’s honest, he likes it almost as much.

It just feels so good to take care of Sam, before as well as after. And it’s a promise, of what’s to come. Whether he plans on fucking him, laying down a barrier so he can eat him out, or just fingering him until he can’t stand one more minute, when he cleans him inside and out, it’s just the first step in an evening dedicated to Sam’s pleasure.

Well. _Their_ pleasure. But he does like to cater to Sam.

And he’d gone the whole nine yards tonight, he had. A nice early dinner, a little glass of wine, some time just to cuddle and kiss, Sam on his lap in the living room, some romantic music playing… time just to start to enjoy each other, to unwind together, to find that place. It’s so easy to find that place with Sam. From there, the whole hygiene routine, getting him all rinsed out, gently wiped down, and then bathed, every part of him massaged and scrubbed and lathered and rinsed. Even now, Sam’s hair is damp, his skin that glowy fresh-from-the-shower pink even where he isn’t flushed with arousal…

His legs fall open when Sean uncaps the lube, he melts back against the pillows… So beautiful, so ready, so needy.

Sean snaps a glove on for this-- hygiene routine or no, almost always does, both so that he can do whatever he wants with his fingers once the glove is off, and because it means no fingernails snagging very sensitive places. Besides… it’s part of the ritual. The sound of that snap is just one more thing to trigger Sam’s response.

He takes his time fingering him, he usually does, he doesn’t know how anyone could do differently. How you could look at a sweet, eager little thing like Sam and not want to just tease him and please him, how you could start working him open and just feel like you were done because he was ready to go, when it’s so rewarding to make him mewl and squirm… oh, Rebecca will never know what she’s missing, will she? If she had ever thought of doing this, maybe she’d still have him, but just as well she didn’t, in Sean’s opinion. Anyone in his position would be just nuts not to spoil Sam like the treasure he is, but Sean doesn’t really want to imagine anyone else in his position. He’s not normally a jealous man by any means, he likes to show his pet off. He’s never really cared about exclusive before… he’s had friends with benefits where kink was just one of those benefits, where the trust and care was there without any strings, but Sam… Sam is exclusively his, and he doesn’t want to play with anybody else.

Maybe he’s gone sentimental, maybe that’s why he thinks nothing else feels quite like sliding into Sam, but sentimental… it’s something he’s wanted a long time and just never thought he was built for. A relationship. Someone who’ll hold his hand when he’s old. Who knows, maybe he’ll still be putting that collar around Sam’s neck when they’re in the old folks’ home. His precious little puppy even with white hair and liver spots.

He ditches the glove, buries himself to the hilt and watches the way Sam arches his back with that sweet little sigh.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” He coos, nipping at Sam’s ear. “I’m deep in you, honey… oh, oh, honey, and do you feel good to me…”

“Yes-- y-yes, _Sean_ … please, please-- I want you to…”

“Want me to what?” He grins. Holds still as he can just to make Sam beg. It might make him crazy, too, but it’s its own kind of good… to feel every twitch of muscle, every breath, all they have to do is hold still a moment and he just keys into everything.

“I want-- I want--”

“Anything you want. Anything at all.”

“Want you to _fuck_ me…” Sam begs at last, that ‘fuck’ hissing out of him like he can hardly let the word escape, that beautiful balance of prim and desperate, the whine at the back of his throat, and he knows better than to move when Sean’s holding them still, knows he needs to ask for it, but Sean doesn’t waste any time rewarding him once he does.

They’ve found a sweet spot, the two of them… they’ve found that place where it’s just rough enough and not too much, where it’s intense and sweet, hard enough to really hit the spot but not fast… not fast enough to finish them off too soon. And it’s not that they’re never fast, just like it’s not that they’re never easy and gentle. But this… this just works. When they don’t have any special whim, any particular mood to satisfy that calls for something else, this is everything Sean needs, and everything Sam does. To hold onto him, pulling his hips so that they meet in that perfect rhythm, to watch his face transformed with pleasure, to see the way he behaves so nicely when he’s given what he needs, arms stretched overhead and crossed at the wrist just waiting to be pinned down at Sean’s desire…

And it’s not subspace, not yet. They’ve had a lovely evening and they’ve put each other in the mood, but it’s been more about romance and the promise of some good sex than it has been about the kinky stuff. It could be… that’s the lovely, lovely thing about Sam, it always could be. Their vanilla probably looks a little kinky to most, but Sam’s just… oh, he’s such a natural.

“You belong in the Louvre…” Sean nips at his ear again, gives him a gentle little tug, the tip of his tongue teasing at the earring there. The small simple hoop he wears on days he has work. “Just like this.”

“Ohh…” Sam shivers, wrapping his legs around Sean. “Like this? They’d, oh, they’d kick us out, wouldn’t they? Mm, surely…”

“On a canvas, larger than life. Very, very artistic, you like this…”

Sam laughs.

“Really, I mean it. Mm, you… spread out. Oh-- let’s, let’s change up the jewelry, honey. An homage to Vermeer-- puppy in a pearl earring.”

“Necklace to match, if you’ve anything to say about it.” He wraps his arms around Sean without parting his wrists from each other, just as if they were tied, invites a kiss that Sean’s only too happy to give, even if they are both laughing.

“No no… not tonight. Tonight I am filling you up…” He says, and Sam clings a little tighter, another little shiver passing over him. Sean swipes his tongue along Sam’s lower lip, nibbles at it, thoughtful a long moment. Definitely something about come… come play? The idea of marking him? Just the mess or something to do with it? Well… he can explore this and see where it goes. Push Sam right over for him.

He kisses him a while longer first, slow and deep and with just a little hint of teeth. Sweet… but not without that little edge he knows his baby likes.

“I’m going to fill you… have you _dripping_ with my seed, honey…”

“Nn…” Sam swallows hard, looks up at him with the most gorgeously lust-blown eyes, his pupils barely ringed with that pretty blue… His cheeks so _pink_. “In-- Deep in me?”

“That’s right… until I’m all spent and it’s all yours. You’ll be such a pretty picture with my come dripping down your thighs. And I’m gonna clean the rest of you right up… but I’m going to leave you a mess just so I can look at you… see that you’re mine all mine.” He promises. Sam’s into it, into Sean spending himself, into being his, but he’s not getting that unsuppressable want, he’s not finding the button to press. “And, uh… well, then, sweetheart, then I might just play with it…”

No.

“Finger you a little more while you’re loose and open and dripping…”

Not it.

“Push it back into you when it starts to slide out…”

Bingo.

“Have you so full with me… Should I plug you up, baby? Leave you full of my come?”

“ _Yes_!” Sam clenches around him, too, head thrown back. Oh, too tempting…

Sean sucks at his throat, worries a little mark to the surface, a little secret beneath tomorrow’s high collared shirt…

“Thinking about it all tomorrow, unable to move without that reminder… knowing I made you mine. Knowing if you slid that plug out, you’d be such a mess… but you wouldn’t, honey, would you? You’d leave it in until I took it out for you… you want to feel me in you, want to imagine that it’s a part of you now…”

“ _Oh_ , oh yes!”

“Well don’t worry, baby, it will be… you’re gonna take me in and I’m gonna fill you with my seed, and--”

“Put a baby in me!”

Sean stops. “What?”

“What?”

“I’m going to what?”

“You stopped.” Sam’s brow furrowed.

“Did you say ‘put a baby in me’?”

“Oh…” He flushes even deeper, biting his lip, eyes darting away. “I might’ve. Did I? I might, I might have, yes. I mean, if that’s what-- well, if that’s what you heard, then, yes, probably, probably that’s what I said.”

“Sam, you don’t want a baby.”

“Yes, well I hardly have a bloody uterus, do I? I mean it’s not-- you said it doesn’t have to make sense! It’s just-- sometimes-- and--”

“Shh, shh…” He kisses him gently, his cheeks and the end of his nose. “Honey. Sweetheart. It doesn’t, I’m sorry. You threw me off a little, I didn’t think you’d, uh… I didn’t think you’d be into it. What with…”

“Yes, well, it’s different like this. If-- if I had it. I mean, if I imagine… imagine having it. If I imagine it’s…”

“Yours.” Sean nods.

“Yours.” Sam shakes his head.

This is not a kink Sean has any experience with. If you had asked him as early as over dinner tonight, he’d have said it was one he had zero interest in. He kisses Sam like he’s never kissed him before, just the same.

“Mine.” He whispers, half into Sam’s mouth. “That’s right, baby, mine… just like you’re mine. You’re all mine, and I am… I am going to fill you with my seed, honey, I’m gonna make you pregnant.”

“Sean…”

“That’s right. That’s right… You’re gonna have my baby, have that in you.” He slides a hand down between them to spread over Sam’s belly-- brushing against his cock where it’s just about flush to him. “Right here. Feel that, baby, feel my hand? Imagine it, right there… growing inside you. Yours and mine, huh?”

Sam nods, so eager, and just starting to get that look, that tipped-right-over look.

“Oh, and I’ll take, I’ll take such good care of you, honey… take such good care of you when you’ve got my baby, is that what you want? Mm… yeah, yeah it is. Put you to bed and rub your feet when you ache, and-- sweetheart, sweetheart-- tell you how happy you make me… mm, and you’ll _glow_ , won’t you, be so happy to have it growing in you…”

He’s not sure what all to say about the matter, but this is working. He lets his hand rub up against Sam’s cock under the guise of merely rubbing circles over his belly, promises him everything he can think to promise out of this scenario, with how little he understands about Sam’s interest. Still, whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it right, has Sam writhing and whimpering and incoherent with just a few more whispered words in his ear. Promises him a line of kisses up his belly, promises to feed him anything he ever gets a craving for, promises him they can do this again and again, he’ll fill him up as often as he can stand, keep him home, pregnant and pampered.

Sam comes, and he’s always a sight when he does, but especially when Sean’s barely been paying attention to his cock, when he can watch the way it jerks and twitches just… lying there outside of his grip. Such a sight… and Sam, who is glowing, with sweat… so flushed and glazed and perfect. His beautiful, sweet Sam… And Sean does exactly what he’d promised, he fills him right up, comes hard, keeps going until he has nothing left to give.

“Baby? Sam, puppy?” He pats his cheek gently. “Honey, you want me to plug you up? Keep my, uh, keep my seed inside you?”

He nods, with that dizzy smile, that glazed, pleasure-drunk look. Sam manages to reach the plug in the drawer, gets the lube, gets it slid into place as soon as he can after sliding out. There’s something gratifying in the way Sam takes it, as if his body can’t bear to be left empty… as if he needs Sean to keep him filled even when it can’t be Sean filling him.

“What a sweet thing you are.” He coos. “Wait right here, baby, let me get you cleaned back up. Mm, don’t you move now, we, uh… we want that to _take_ , right? And that’ll… that’ll happen if you just relax and keep on feeling good, yeah?”

He can’t help a smile at seeing that shudder of pleasure ripple through Sam, and the way he sighs and relaxes even further, until he’s just a, just a sweet little Sam-shaped _puddle_.

“I’ll be right back.” Sean adds, before he ducks into the bathroom for a washcloth.

He gets Sam cleaned up, gets him installed against the blankets with a cup of tea and his favorite blanket around his shoulders, covers pulled up just to his lap, with a hot water bottle resting over his naked belly. Helps him hold his teacup and pets at him, and feeds him a chocolate truffle while he tries to bullshit his way through why the aftercare might be good for the non-existent baby, until it’s time to shift back out of it.

Sam’s together enough to brush his own teeth, to not waver when he stands so that Sean can leave him to use the toilet alone-- though dressing him in his monogrammed pajamas is still Sean’s job, no matter how together Sam might be. After, when Sean’s let the cat in, helped the poor old guy up onto the bed to cuddle with them, they settle in. Sean spooned around Sam, the cat perched up on Sam’s thigh, warm and purring through the duvet… a perfect night, all in all.

“Sam, baby?” He noses at the back of Sam’s ear.

“Mm?” Sam laces their fingers together, tugging Sean’s hand up a little higher to rest right over his heart.

“You don’t… you aren’t… You haven’t changed your mind, right? About-- about kids. Wanting… wanting that in your future?”

“Oh good heavens no.” He groans the words out in a rush. “I don’t want children of my own. It’s not about a child, it’s… I don’t know, really.”

“Well… as long as it’s not about something I can’t do for you, I don’t think we need to understand everything about it.” Sean smiles, kissing the back of his neck. “I’ll pretend to knock you up any time.”

Sam chuckles and cuddles back into him, as best he can without disturbing the sleeping cat.

“Could we-- could we do it again this weekend?”

“If that’s when you’re fertile, honey. It’s a date.”


	9. Wow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A size kink fill for the DW prompt meme

Normally, Tommy would use his own shower. The perks of being in the inner circle and living up in the bunkhouse. But there are things he will not track through the living area of the institute, and definitely not into his own room.

And of course there’s the fact that he and New Jersey are in the same boat… which means the same shower. He’s not going to break from shared shower etiquette without an invitation-- and the flirting that’s been going back and forth between them is not an invitation-- but still. It’s an opportunity to lay down a little invitation of his own, if the moment feels right.

“Bet you’re glad you didn’t wear your favorite boots today, cowboy.” He teases, stripping down. They’d both had to hose off a little, back before they’d started their return to the institute, and at least the action had only happened a few miles up the road, since Reno had made them walk, after the unfortunate mess they’d found themselves in. To be fair, Tommy wouldn’t track what he’d been covered in into any car, let alone his _baby_. He was always going to walk. But he wouldn’t have begrudged Sidney tracking a little muck in if he had wanted...

Tommy’s been trying not to think about what exactly that sludge he’d been tackled into even _was_ , and he wishes he could rule a few things out, but the important thing was that they’d intercepted the World Crime League operatives who’d been skulking around the area before they could call in more reinforcements and mount a real attack, or head back to their own headquarters with information on the Banzai Institute.

Tommy had been tackled into the stuff very much against his will-- New Jersey had jumped in on his own right after, to help pull the other guy off, and was the difference between Tommy continuing to breathe or having his face dunked under. He figures he owes him for that.

“Yeah. Dunno if anything’s gonna save this shirt, either.” Jersey laughs, stripping out of it. It had been almost sky blue that morning, well worn denim with a soft red plaid inside the cuffs and collar. There are still… spots of the original color, here and there. Tommy has a hard time focusing on the shirt and not the body it’s just come off of, bare skin and lean muscle and dark smudges of filth that had dried over the course of the walk.

Well, on that front, they look about the same, though New Jersey’s hair had been spared, at least, and Tommy doesn’t even want to think about how his own looks.

“Yeah, you should do what I do.”

“Oh, you’ve got some kind of secret to clean laundry?”

“Nope. But some days I don’t bother wearing a shirt.”

Okay, so usually that’s for performances and the odd photo shoot, and not ops. Still, it’s a view he wouldn’t mind having under other circumstances, that tall-dark-and-handsome cowboy standing there bare-chested and blushing.

Maybe blushing. Hard to tell with his complexion unless he’s really mortified, and this isn’t that. Pleased, more than embarrassed, by the look on his face, and that’s a little promising.

“Don’t think I could pull off the look quite so well.” Jersey chuckles and rubs at the back of his neck, gives Tommy just enough of a once-over to turn a little promising to a lot promising.

“You kidding me?” Tommy lets his own eyes roam, a nice slow little circuit over New Jersey’s chest and abs, his shoulders, arms. He’s lean, sure, but he’s _toned_ … kept himself in very good shape before he joined up with them. “You could pull that look off, no problem.”

“Well… maybe I’ll take your opinion into consideration…” He looks away, soft little smile in place, a smile that’s almost an invitation in and of itself.

The way he looks back to him, the way his eyes catch hold of Tommy’s and hold on as he starts to unbuckle his belt? That might be an invitation. He looks away a moment too soon to be sure. There’s flirting and then there’s really meaning things are good to go, there’s ‘sure, you and me could have something’ and there’s ‘take me to bed now’.

So Tommy isn’t going to look at any more than he’s given, because he thinks you have to be strict with yourself with the etiquette of these things, it’s just that after they’ve both turned to finish undressing, and as he’s down grabbing his emergency kit out of the locker he keeps down here, for those times that he really can’t track what he’s covered in around, as he’s bent over to grab his stuff, he turns his head to say something just as Jersey moves from where he’d been to directly in Tommy’s line of sight, and…

Wow.

“Sorry.” He coughs, turning. “I was just gonna say, did you have any soap down here?”

“No. Um, but...”

“I’ve got you covered, then. Towels and all’re just over there in the cupboard.”

He glances his way just enough to be able to toss him an unopened bar of soap, moving almost entirely on autopilot.

Wow.

New Jersey is… something. He really is something. Now, Tommy had had expectations, sure, a big, tall man like that, he’d expected ‘proportionate’, but this was something else. This was…

Wow.

“Thanks. What was the, um, the ‘sorry’ for?”

“Oh. Just… you know. Normally I’m pretty careful not to look around too much in locker rooms.”

There’s a heavy pause. After earlier, he doesn’t expect the man to be mad at him, but embarrassed, maybe. They’d flirted, then he’d turned away, and that put any looking on hold, or it should have. And he wants to do so much more than look, he really does, but he’s not sure if he can _take_ it all. And that’s _soft_!

“I understand.” Jersey says, and his voice is too-careful. “I know what it’s like to be careful not to look around too much in locker rooms.”

“Figured.” Tommy’s shoulders relax a little, but not a lot. “You and me seem to understand a lot of the same things.”

“I think we do.” And his tone is still mild and a little… a little sterile. Careful. But… well. Maybe he’s trying to keep careful the way Tommy’s trying to keep careful. “I used to avoid this… showering with other guys, I mean. Took ‘em in the, uh, in the middle of the night, all through college, med school. Thought I’d have the place to myself that way. Actually, Buckaroo and I were on the same schedule, but… I mean, it worked out in the end, anyway. And he’s just got a way of not making you feel self-conscious, and-- and not letting you worry about things. Usually easier to avoid one guy than a crowd.”

“Usually.” He smiles. “Maybe not today, but usually. I don’t mind if you look back-- fair’s fair. Just try and get me from my good side.”

“Perfect Tommy, as if you had a bad one.”

That, that’s too much. _Flirty_ , now. What’s more, he’s got some thoughts about the fact Buckaroo knew what Sidney Zweibel was packing and didn’t think to give him a nod when he introduced them? A little ‘my friend here is your type’?

And he is Tommy’s type. It’s not just that he’d put Milton Berle to shame, it’s everything. The gentle manners and the steely reserve buried underneath, the ‘aw shucks’ cowboy charm, those hands, those lips, those eyes… The fact that he doesn’t have a bad side, either. Left, right, front, back, in-, out-, not a bad one in the bunch.

Sidney Zweibel… what a guy.

“Well…” Tommy looks back over his shoulder, catches Jersey’s eye and directs him downward with just a slight nod. “I’d call this my best side. Not as impressive as _some_ guys around here, from the front.”

“I thought fair was fair.”

“Oh, you turn around for me and I’ll turn around for you, cowboy.”

Sidney breaks out into a grin and does.

And Tommy thought he’d be shy…

Well, he doesn’t expect to impress, but he turns to show off the goods from the front, too, he’d said he would. And Sidney, he looks a lot more impressed than Tommy would have expected from a man of his… ‘stature’.

“And here I thought you were perfect before.”

“You keep breaking out your best lines on me, and some things are gonna happen here between us.”

“Well we should probably shower before that happens.” Sidney nods.

What. a. Man.

Sidney doesn’t have his own soap down in the locker room, but what he does have is packets of something that smells very medical and looks very pink, dug out of somewhere.

“Just start with your hair and then let it get everything else-- but then you’re gonna, ha… I mean you really are gonna want to use your regular, um, all your regular products. Unless you like smelling like a hospital, I mean. But just-- in case that muck we were in was…”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Invitation made, he doesn’t bother with trying not to look. Whenever it’s convenient, he looks over at Sidney, and whenever it’s convenient, Sidney’s looking right back. And normally Tommy would be all over a guy when the interest is so clear, but… well, it’s not like he’s holding back, either, but back in his youth, he’d be on his knees by now. If he knew the guy was interested, hell, he might be done and back on his feet by now. As it is, he feels like he’s just stumbling along in Sidney’s wake, unable to do much more than think about how much he wants him and whether or not he can take him.

“You want to help me with my hard to reach places?” Tommy offers, once they’ve been sanitized, once they’ve started in on lathering themselves up with plain, inoffensive bar soap. And there’s a little bit of shyness now in the smile Sidney gives him when he nods. Which at least puts them both on the same eager and unsure footing. And Tommy hasn’t been unsure with a guy since…

Maybe his first time.

Sidney’s hands are big, too… strong and careful kneading at his shoulders, friction eased by lather, and he smooths over the soapy skin in firm strokes. And he’s getting hard, too, hard as Tommy’s been getting just from the looks and the anticipation and the touch of his own hands on the rest of his body, hard enough that when he stands behind Tommy soaping up his back, his cock is nudging right at the cleft of Tommy’s ass.

“You know, Sidney…” He starts, and he just rocks back a little when Sidney starts to apologize. “I’m not what you’d call unversed or anything. But I’ve never had a man like you… or one as big as you.”

“Thought you meant as big as me.” He laughs, nervous.

“No. I mean just a man like you. And it’s a compliment. And I hope you know it’s not… not any kind of real reluctance on my end if I just don’t know where to _start,_ with a man like you.”

“I am.”

“You’re what? Like yourself?” He rocks back a little more, reveling in the lather-eased slide of skin on skin.

“Unversed.” Sidney whispers, hands stilling on Tommy’s shoulders.

Oh.

Wow.

Tommy turns, slow, and he doesn’t want to gawp like a big dummy, but… unversed? Sidney Zweibel, and he’s never? That is quite a lot of virgin territory.

“It’s okay if you don’t want--”

“Cowboy, I _want_.” He holds a hand up. “But this ain’t a crash course. If you’ve never been with a man before, I’m gonna do right by you on it. Take you to bed. Actually kiss you first. If you like kissing?”

Sidney stares at Tommy’s lips and nods. Tommy reaches up to cup his cheek.

“Good. ‘Cause I kiss. And I’m told I’m damn good at it.”

Sidney just nods again, about as wide-eyed as Tommy had been a moment ago.

“Sid?” Tommy leans in closer. “Sidney? You gotta let me know, darlin’, if this is some no-strings thing for you or if you’re looking for the long haul. I’ll try whatever you wanna try, but I gotta know first.”

“Long haul.” Sidney says, his breath ghosting across Tommy’s lips in the moment before they both lean in to bridge that gap.

He has nice lips, that Sidney. Maybe not as nice as Tommy’s own, but then, Tommy wouldn’t know. Nicer than anyone else he’d ever kissed. There’d been a boy with nice lips back during Tommy’s stint behind bars, but he wasn’t a good kisser… Sidney’s good at kissing. However unversed he might be, the boy can kiss. He’s eager and he’s tender and he’s _responsive_ , and they can’t do this for too long if they want to get to bed as planned, but…

“You wanna kill the hot water and move this party upstairs?”

“Anything you want.”

“Oh, that’s a dangerous offer. Might not climb back off you if this is gonna be anything I want.”

Sidney laughs and ducks his head, and they both flinch when Tommy switches the water to cold before shutting it off completely.

Sidney doesn’t have an emergency locker set up, a fact Tommy remembers when he goes to grab his own clothes and realizes Sidney has none, beyond the potential biohazard they dumped in the hamper.

“Here. Won’t be a perfect fit, but it’ll do in an emergency.” He tosses him the sweatpants from his own locker. Admires the view shamelessly when they do nothing whatsoever to hide what Sidney’s packing. He goes ahead and gives Sidney his tee shirt, too. It’s a nice fit across the shoulders, and there’s just the tiniest little strip of bare skin between where the shirt ends and the sweatpants hang low on his hips. Sidney’s more modest, after all-- Tommy doesn’t mind walking through the institute in his underwear. Not in an emergency.

And not if it means giving Sidney an eyeful-- even his emergency underwear is heavily flattering.

“Oh, I could look at you like this more often.” He gives Sidney a playful leer.

“I should say the, uh, the same for-- for you, wow, you-- Wow.”

“I should talk about wow.” Tommy steps in and gives him a pointed look up and down. Has to stop himself reaching out to get a hold of him right through the sweats. “Bed, we gotta get to bed, I don’t think I can keep myself virtuous around you much longer, Doc.”

“Oh. Okay. Yes. This-- this has been virtuous?”

“Very. You wanna see filthy?”

Sidney nods. Tommy turns and heads for the door, looking back over his shoulder to see Sidney hurrying after him.

They’re lucky enough not to run into anybody on their way up to the bunkhouse-- nobody who hadn’t seen them come trudging in covered in muck and head down to clean up. No surprise they’d be in a hurry to get up to their bunks and get decent. And nobody needs to know if that’s not what happens, after all…

He leads Sidney to his own room, kisses him the second his hand is on the doorknob, before they’re even out of the hallway, and they drag each other to the bed in a flurry of hands and tongues and a beautiful return to that building _heat_.

“Lemme lock the door…” Tommy pulls away. “Just relax, darlin’ I’ll be right back to take _good_ care of you.”

“Uh-huh.” Sidney nods, watching him. Tommy locks the door and strips out of his underwear under that watchful, hungry look, and he enjoys every moment.

He gets Sidney peeled out of his clothes next, pressing wet kisses down his chest, the center line of his abdomen.

He’s never wanted something in his mouth more. In him, period, really, he wants to take Sidney every which way possible, he wants to use every part of himself worshiping that cock. Because it’s going to be the best, biggest, most beautiful one he’s ever had, and because it’s Sidney. Sidney, sweet and clever and brave. And hot, and hung. Tommy figures he can have noble and shallow reasons for liking the guy.

“Oh…” Sidney gasps, soft, when Tommy first gets a hand around him, coaxing him slowly back towards full hardness.

Must take a while, big as he is, and he intends to have a lot of fun with the process. It’s immensely rewarding to feel the way he firms up, skin growing hotter. The way his breathing grows ragged already and he grips at the bedsheets, and how his cock twitches in Tommy’s hands.

“Beautiful… You want the long haul? ‘Cause I can give you things… you won’t ever have to look at another man. Not with how good I’m gonna be to you, darlin’.”

“I don’t… I don’t think there are any other men as nice to look at.” Sidney manages.

Well… whether or not that’s to feed his ego, Tommy thinks it deserves a reward. He licks his lips, slow, gets them real slick and wet before he lets them slide against the head of Sidney’s cock, and then along the shaft, before he kisses his way up the underside, from Sidney’s balls up to the tiny little line of the circumcision scar. Meets his eyes before he takes him in.

Sidney is struggling to keep his composure, and Tommy can’t wait to break it. Sidney’s so _thick_ , and so long, he doesn’t know if he can even deep throat all of him. Certainly not for long, but that’s just fine, because he doesn’t want to miss out on his chance to get Sidney inside him… he thinks he can take him all.

Maybe.

He pulls off when his jaw can’t take any more, watches the way Sidney stares, slack-jawed, at the line of saliva connecting Tommy’s lower lip to his cock until it breaks.

“ _Tommy_ …”

He nods, rubbing gently at Sidney’s thigh. When his voice comes, it’s a little rough already.

“Hold on, all right? Get your breath back. Act two’s where it gets _real_ exciting.”

He opens and closes his mouth silently, helpless, those big brown eyes so wide… Prettiest shade of brown Tommy thinks there is. Anyone who says brown’s not a pretty color, they’ve never looked into the right pair of eyes. And Sidney’s… deep and warm and dark chocolate rich. He could stare into them for hours if he didn’t have something better to do.

“I’ll be right back.” He promises, with a kiss to Sidney’s cheek-- and Sidney catches him before he can leave the bed, kisses him full on the lips.

He ducks into the bathroom, starts the necessary preparations and digs out what they’ll need for the rest.

Back in bed, he gives deep throating Sidney one last good try, just to keep him from flagging, and he can’t help a moan when Sidney’s unable to keep his hips completely still. This wasn’t his smartest idea, he does occasionally use his voice, what with the band and all, but it’s so fucking _hot_. If he thought he could survive it, he’d beg Sidney to fuck his throat real good and hard…

He pulls away at last and takes Sidney’s hands, guides him through rolling on the condom. And it’s _sexy_ , it really is. Anyone who says safe sex isn’t sexy has no imagination, because their hands together, going nice and slow? The way Sidney’s already looking at him in awe?

“Are you sure? I mean… wouldn’t it be easier, if…?”

“Not on your life.” Tommy says-- and yeah, his voice is wrecked. Might be some bruising.

_Fucking worth it._

“Tommy…”

“I _want_ you. You can take a ride next time, but it’s my turn.” He strokes Sidney’s chest, easing him to just lie back and relax.

“You’re sure?”

Tommy nods, and Sidney breaks out into the most beautiful smile, has him following suit.

“Show me what to do?” Sidney asks, and he’s so earnest, oh and he’s so beautiful…

This is absolutely stupid. Tommy’s already walked three, four miles today. But it was gentle walking, wasn’t a serious hike… He can do this. Shouldn’t take them too long once they get the ball rolling, his legs can hold out.

Probably.

He can’t really deny himself now.

He walks him through how to handle prep, and he’s not surprised Sidney is careful and gentle, and not surprised that his fingers alone feel so good… but he’s looking for something better and Sidney’s got it.

And then, finally, he sinks down onto him and feels the glorious stretch, the fullness. Has it ever been this good? Sidney’s holding his hips and trying to slow his descent, and both of them breathing hard already, groaning in tandem. Tommy shifts, bracing himself against Sidney’s chest as he rocks a little, as he slowly starts to take more.

“It doesn’t hurt?” Sidney asks, breathless.

Tommy shakes his head, angling himself for a nice direct hit to his prostate before shifting to let Sidney slide past, really filling him. The stimulation is different, still good… and being so deeply filled with him, that’s what really does it for him. There’s so _much_ of Sidney. Almost too much to fit, but Tommy is nothing if not game for a challenge, and Sidney feels so _good_.

“You’re good. _Real_ good… This ain’t my first rodeo, cowboy.” He repositions Sidney’s hands, moving them to support his thighs. “Just my biggest.”

“I’ve never been ridden before.” Sidney laughs breathlessly, only for it to turn to a keen, high moan as Tommy _squeezes_ around him. “Oh-- oh, _Tommy_ …”

He does his best to take it slow. He has already hurt himself once, a little. Nothing he won’t recover from with a couple easy days… maybe a week. It’s not like he can’t talk at all, it’s just that he probably shouldn’t.

Of course, he’s going to.

“Sidney…” He groans, taking a little more, pausing to catch his breath. He feels such an all-encompassing rightness like this. It’s good sex, but it’s not just good sex. It’s…

It’s the guy who jumped into a pit in the ground filled with something that smelled like the marriage between toxic sludge and a pig farm to save him, while Reno laid down cover fire, and he didn’t think twice, and he didn’t complain about walking back those three, four miles because it meant talking with Tommy all the way, with their hands brushing together every so often as they swung their arms, keeping pace with each other. The guy who didn’t have regular toiletries and a set of clothes stashed down in the public showers at the institute, but did have… medical grade soap, for a real emergency Tommy guesses. The guy who gets up early to cook for everyone because he says he finds it relaxing, but there’s something so far from relaxed in the giddy little moment when their hands always touch as Sidney hands off a loaded plate or a cup of coffee to Tommy, a moment the others don’t get. The guy who turns towards Tommy always for some little private joke even in the middle of joking around with everyone else. _Sidney_.

He’s not sure what he would have done if Sidney had said this was no-strings. Well, he’d have fucked him anyway, obviously he’s not here to make just the good decisions, but he doesn’t know how he’d handle it after. He wants strings. He’s been in love before, sure. Not successfully, but he knows what the feeling is. The feeling is like this, when he looks into Sidney Zweibel’s beautiful brown eyes and sees the wonder in them that this is happening. When sweat threatens the grip Sidney has on his thighs and the purchase he has against Sidney’s chest, but they just do their best to stay firmly connected. When Sidney gasps out his name and gently rocks his hips up to move in time with Tommy and seems like he might just cry with how perfect the two of them are together, with how good it all is.

They’re slow right up to the end, when Sidney wraps his hand around Tommy’s hard, leaking cock and strokes him to the pace they’ve set, and it’s so good, it’s so much, he’s so _fulfilled_ , physically and otherwise, really.

And he knows he’d said next time he could top for Sidney if he wanted, but he really kind of hopes Sidney decides he prefers to top. If he had to go without this now that he’s tasted it he thinks he’d die. He just needs to get a little more accustomed to him, that’s all, and then they can try different positions, speeds, maybe some power… Sidney could put some power into it and Tommy would like that just fine… He just has to get used to him first, too much all at once and he’d just hurt himself, and Sidney would feel bad about that, no matter how many times Tommy might say it was worth it, so worth it, everything about Sidney is worth it.

He comes across Sidney’s chest and watches the way his eyes go wide a moment as he takes the sight in, before he follows Tommy over. And it’s not exactly comfortable to stay like this after the big event, but Tommy’s not eager to lose that feeling, either. He collapses the moment he’s eased off of Sidney, and he means to clean him up, but his legs are jelly and his arms aren’t much better, and it’s all he can do just to kiss Sidney’s shoulder and keep breathing.

“Wow.” Sidney says at last, in a small voice. “Tommy… Wow.”

“Mmm, you said it.” Tommy rasps.

“Oh!” And Sidney is suddenly a flutter of activity, gently cleaning them both up, rolling Tommy this way and then that. Checking him for damage, which is sweet.

“I’m fine.”

“I just… I wanted to be sure you… Wow. Tommy, you look… Wow. I’ve never-- I’ve never seen anything like you just now, you-- you just ought to know, I-- And I think you’re just-- just perfect. I mean, really, I do, and-- You’re really sure I didn’t hurt you?”

He carefully brushes over Tommy with the damp washcloth he’d gotten for cleaning them up with, making him twitch a little. He hears the awed little sound.

“I’ll be back to normal soon.” He snorts.

“Your voice sounds, uh…”

“That’ll be normal soon, too.”

“Hush.” Sidney kisses his cheek, and he’s so sweet, so gentle about it. “Oh, you’re a mess, honey, wait here for me.”

“Not goin’ anywhere.”

“And don’t talk. That sounds painful.” Another kiss, and Sidney pulls the covers over him, before pulling the borrowed sweatpants back on.

“You look good in those.”

“Tommy. If you won’t listen to me as a doctor, then, uh, as the guy you just-- you know, as the guy you’re, now…”

“Boyfriend?” He croaks.

“Don’t talk.” Sidney says sweetly.

He mimes zipping his lips, watches Sidney duck out into the hall in nothing but those sweatpants. When he comes back, it’s clear from his expression that he’s become aware of the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and maybe of the fact that those sweatpants make it very clear how many inches the good doctor measures in at. Maybe he saw his reflection, Tommy’s pretty sure his hair has never looked this wild… And of course there’s that just-got-laid glow.

He really does look good. Tommy’s pretty sure he’s not going to convince him that he’s good to go for a round two, but oh does he want to…

Instead, he lets Sidney force some kind of sports drink into him, and it’s… he’d gag on it if he hadn’t completely destroyed his gag reflex… But if it makes Sidney feel better, well, who is he to complain? And he did sweat buckets, between the fight, the walk, and very much the sex, it probably doesn’t hurt to aggressively rehydrate a little.

He wraps an arm around Sidney once he’s done, dragging him down to be cuddled.

When they do finally see fit to re-emerge from Tommy’s room, he lends Sidney a robe just so he can get down the hall to his own room for clothes. Tommy doesn’t bother with more than his pajamas, after the day he’s had. It feels a little decadent, at five in the evening, but it also feels a lot later than five to him.

The guys don’t seem surprised, anyway, by the fact that he’s in pajamas or the fact that he doesn’t sit down.

“What happened on that walk home you took?” Reno teases him.

“Uh, Perfect Tommy can’t-- actually, he can’t really… talk right now.” Sidney coughs delicately. “Bruising.”

Reno leans in, grabbing Tommy’s chin and turning his head to look at his throat. “I don’t see any bruises, you sure you went to medical scho-- oh. Bruising.” He pats Tommy’s shoulder. “Good for you?”

Tommy nods.

“You don’t have to look so smug.” Reno shakes his head.

“Wait, you can’t talk _and_ you can’t sit?” Pinky looks between him and Sidney. “New Jersey, you _dog_.”

“Might ask you to shut him up a little more often.” Reno laughs.

“It’s not funny, I didn’t mean to.”

“We do need Tommy’s voice some of the time.” Buckaroo says, moving to pat Sidney’s shoulder. “He’ll be fine before then.”

Tommy jabs a finger in Buckaroo’s direction.

“What? What’d I do?”

It’s an elaborate charades routine to try to communicate ‘you didn’t tell me your friend was also gay and _easily_ ten and a half inches relaxed when you introduced us so that I could have done this months ago’, but he gets his point across somehow, he thinks.

Well, it’s hard to tell with Buckaroo.

“Everything works out for the best in the end, Tommy.” He nods sagely.

Well… he can’t argue with that.


	10. Heart in Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An AU where Michael travels to see Alex after having his calls ignored/avoided, a couple months before what would be the events of the film. For the DW comm fandomweekly and the prompt 'second chances'

If anyone else had stopped taking his calls, Michael might have accepted it. Meg did, he had. Alex is different. Alex stops taking his calls and he thinks about senior year, Alex fragile, no reason except the clawing at the back of his brain, the stress of giving up on physics. He thinks about the week he’d spent not shaving and the way he’d hesitated picking up a knife, and the time he’d crawled into Michael’s bed at three in the morning and whispered ‘it’s just hard’, and they hadn’t talked about it. He hadn’t fully understood, then. 

\---/-/---

If anyone else had tried to get in touch, Alex might have accepted it. He’d moved in with Harold and Sarah, after all, after everything. Michael is different. Michael calls, and he thinks about everything they’d shared, the one thing they’d shared. There’s a tug on him that Harold and Sarah don’t see, that Michael would. It’s easier if they don’t talk, because if the day comes the tug pulls him under, Michael shouldn’t be close. He should forget about him first, let him become just another old friend he doesn’t talk to.

\---/-/---

Michael is pretty sure he’s going to lose his job. Pretty sure he doesn’t care. There are other places he could go, places he’d be happier. The Village Voice, if they’ll take him, or he’d go back to teaching and freelancing and hoping for the best. This is more important. This is terrifyingly important in ways he can’t let himself fully put words to. The mental images are enough, drops of red welling up on the skin, a little and then a lot, too much, no stop to it, and Alex, Alex… Maybe he’ll show up and Alex will call him crazy for worrying, and it will just be that he doesn’t care anymore, and that’ll hurt, but there are worse hurts. One worse hurt.

\---/-/---

Alex is pretty sure he’s not going to get hired. Pretty sure he doesn’t care. Harold’s done his best to help him find something, keeps offering to hire him if nothing else comes through. It doesn’t matter, nothing does. In a week, Alex could be feeling great, or he could be dead, it’s impossible to know. He never did know how to plan for the future. He’s never known what he wanted, ever since the one thing he was good at became the one thing he couldn’t do. 

\---/-/---

Michael’s half-dead with exhaustion when he finally pulls to a stop outside the Coopers’ house. He’s not sure how long it’s been since the last time he stopped. He’s been too wired to get much sleep. Twelve hours on the road, or thereabouts. He feels like he doesn’t know anything anymore, as he knocks on the door, frozen in time. Can’t breathe easy until the door swings open and Alex is there. Cutoff sweatshirt, the old college blue and yellow, ratty grey sweatpants low on his hips. Dirty blond hair a mess. Two days’ worth of stubble, and something in Michael’s heart clenches up at that.

\---/-/---

Michael. Standing there, slacks and a sweater, what has he done with his hair? And new glasses, since the last time they saw each other, big frames, but he’s always preferred big frames. Dark eyes so wide, swaying on his feet, the uncertainty in his expression, and whatever brought him out here… whatever brought him out here, it’s something, how could Alex have not picked up the phone for him? How could he have told himself Michael would be better off, when he’s needed him? When they’ve needed each other. He opens his arms, Michael’s name on his lips, they crash into a hug his body’s been missing for years.

\---/-/---

Michael stumbles forward, Alex catches him, they catch each other, and suddenly they’re on the couch, words tumbling out, tears tumbling out. He’s folded in half with his glasses in his hand, with his face buried against Alex’ chest, shaking with each sob. They piece together the chapters in each other’s life stories since they parted. Lonely nights and too many questions. The feeling of being adrift in the world. Needing something. Needing this. The emptiness no one else understood. Things they always did. The two of them, together again, the way they were meant to be. The thing they shied back from, once.

\---/-/---

Alex isn’t sure who began it. He isn’t sure who moved first, he isn’t sure who cried first, he isn’t sure who began the moment which brought their lips together. It was him, when they were young, when he was unafraid of consequences-- or just unsure he would live to see them-- and he could reach for what he wanted. But it had been Michael who kept calling, Michael who drove so long to see him, maybe now it’s Michael who’s unafraid. Michael who knows the worst consequence of reaching is better than the consequence of fear. Maybe it’s a back and forth. All he knows is that when it happens, it feels right. And everything after that first kiss is the two of them in tandem.

\---/-/---

There’s a man on the couch, when Harold gets home. A man on his couch-- a man on top of Alex on his couch, sprawled out in rumpled clothes, snoring, his face pressed into Alex’ chest, impossibly long legs, a pair of glasses dangling from his hand. And Alex just smiles and touches a finger to his lips, like there shouldn’t even be anything unexpected about this situation, as if Harold could expect to come home and find his best friend underneath a strange man on the couch. It’s only when he comes closer, sees the smushed and sleeping profile half buried in Alex’ college sweatshirt. How long has it been since he’s seen Michael with short hair, without that beard he’d started growing sophomore year, how long has it been since he’s seen  Michael ? He could hug him! But Alex shushes him, and maybe hello can wait.


	11. Never Can Say Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will I ever stop writing about Michael being the saddest sad boy?

The news sweeps over him at first, like water over the smooth stone of his brain, nothing catching anywhere. He can’t hold onto the information. Says ‘what’ ten times. Sam, on the other end, says he’d told Harold he’d call, they’d formed a phone tree, and Michael can’t hold onto that, either.

He doesn’t understand any of it, until Sam says ‘maybe it was an accident’ with such a discomfort that it hits him. 

He doesn’t know how the conversation ended. He wrote down the information Sam gave, the pertinent details. Viewing, funeral, wake. 

Viewing. He wants to, has to. He never got to see his parents. They were buried right away, he was at college, the funeral had to come after. He’d known it was what they wanted, embalming out of the question, and he’d been told the crash was bad, he wouldn’t want to see them like that anyway, and he hadn’t. He hadn’t, he was nineteen, he was fucking nineteen years old and he didn’t want to see them broken and empty, he didn’t want to remember them like that every time he closed his eyes, he’d had nightmares anyway.

He has to see Alex. He has to know if it’s what he’s afraid of seeing, he has to know what life’s done to him since last they saw each other, but he’s thirty-three years old and he knows that in his memories, Alex is always going to be nineteen, twenty, twenty-one… he knows no matter what, he’ll never lose the vision he’s lived with in the years since college. 

He’s lived with all of them, loved all of them, so fiercely since then. He’s held onto them, condensed and frozen in time inside of his heart. Gotten family newsletters and the odd phone call, kept up as much as life has allowed any of them, knows how Sarah and Harold and Karen all look now from those newsletters, and of course Sam. Hasn’t seen a picture of Nick from the past ten years, saw Meg once maybe eight years back and they never made anything work out since, even though she’s not far…

In his heart they’re all twenty-one, wild creatures of promise and compassion. None moreso than Alex, it was always Alex. The center that he guesses could not hold. If it’s true, if it wasn’t an accident…

He has to see him. He has to say goodbye. He knows he won’t be able to say a single word of what sits heavy on his collapsed heart, but he has to see him. To acknowledge for himself the feelings he never got the chance to speak before. Things he might have spilled down the telephone line if he could have done, there were nights he felt mad enough to, clinging to the receiver and waiting and knowing… 

He has his friends to look forward to, at least. He’s not sure how he’d carry himself on if he didn’t know they would be there for him.


	12. Statistics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another one for a fandomweekly prompt on DW.

Ian’s frozen in front of the television in the staff lounge when they find him, so like the day the new park had been announced, he’d been catatonic when they’d finally reached him, had stood there stock still…

“Alan.” He whispers, which is better than that awful day, at least, and Alan fits himself under Ian’s arm on his bad side, Ellie sliding under his other arm. “A giganotosaurus… that’s bigger than a T-Rex.”

“New attraction?” Ellie frowns. The TV ad is long gone, but the damage is done.

“How much bigger?”

“Ian… you don’t have to think about that. You’re doing what you can.”

“How much bigger? Alan, if you don’t tell me, I’ll just look it up. I would like for you to tell me.”

“I’m not sure. Our specimens are incomplete. Maybe a meter more, tip to tail.”

“Speed?”

“Thirty one miles per hour at most. We think. That’s not faster than a Rex.”

“More than a human.” Ian’s jaw is tight. He closes his eyes, Alan can feel the shudder that runs through him, and he hates this. He hates the way it’s been since they announced they were going to do it after all, in spite of everything Ian once said, in spite of everything he sacrificed to tell the world what a monumentally bad idea… The way he watches the news and barely sleeps, how the nightmares are back, so many more bad days for his leg. How much older he looks.

“Don’t do this to yourself.” Ellie leans up to kiss his cheek, but it’s an old argument. Futile and she knows it.

“This is the work.” He says. “I fix it, or I don’t, but I don’t get to stop trying. Bite strength?”

“We don’t know.”

“Alan…”

“We don’t know. Maybe they do now, but I don’t, we can’t calculate. Not exact-- Weaker than a T-Rex.” He says. That helps, at least, but not much. Ian sags against him, his breathing not so shallow and rapid. “Different kind of hunter.”

“Still a hunter.” Ian swallows. He was fired up at first, when there was a chance to stop the place opening, and now… now, he just always seems so  weary . Alan hates to even think the word ‘weak’. None of them are happy with this, none of them are okay, but Ian seems like he’s going through so much more…

“Still a hunter.” Alan presses his face into Ian’s shoulder and holds on tight.

“People will die.  Kids , Alan, I--”

“You can  rest , Ian.” Ellie urges. “Everyone knows you’re fighting, but you can rest.”

“No.” He says. “I can’t.”

“Ian--”

“You don’t have to understand.” He turns to kiss her head, then Alan’s. “But you have to let me fight. Either I fix it, or I don’t, but I can’t… I can’t.”

“We understand.” Alan promises. Maybe not everything, but enough. If he stopped, it wouldn’t stop the worry eating him alive. They’d still have to see him suffer. “We do, honey.”


	13. Some Other Guy You Knew Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael's never been lucky in love, but he believes in it. Sam's beginning to understand the appeal of a good rationalization. This conversation was never going to end to anybody's satisfaction, but sometimes it helps just to say something, and sometimes it's enough for someone to listen, even if they don't understand the whole story.

“I don’t think people were meant to be monogamous, anyway.” Sam says, and it’s apropos of nothing. They’re sitting on the porch lingering a little, before they make their returns to the real world. They hadn’t been talking about non-monogamy, and whatever Sam might have gotten up to, it’s not like he’s got anyone to cheat on back home.

“I guess some people aren’t, I don’t know.”

“I mean, you’d go for whatever opportunity presented itself to you, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Michael shrugs. “Sure, ha, now. But I don’t think we’re inherently prone to going around just having sex with anybody. I think, um, I think true love exists, and when you’re in it, you don’t get that itch.”

“No you don’t, you’re saying that because I said sleeping around is natural. Mikey the cynic is not arguing about true love to me. You spent this weekend trying as hard as anybody else to get your ashes hauled, pal--”

“No one expects me to be faithful.” He says. He and Annie have their thing. It wasn’t ever Love, not capital L Love, but they still see each other. She’s the one person he has in New York he could call for anything, and she could call him, even if they gave up on calling what they had couplehood.

“What I’m saying is, you don’t know what you’re talking about. A person can be in love and still stray, even have feelings for a second person, and… and it’s human nature.”

“It’s not real love, then, not if you’re cheating. It’s comfort, it’s routine, it’s liking someone or lusting after them and fooling yourself.”

“You’ve got a lot of grand ideas for a guy who’s never been in it.”

“I’ve been in love before.” Michael frowns, hunching in on himself. “It’s not an easy thing to get over.”

_“Marriage is an institution, and I have no desire to be institutionalized.” Alex quipped. He was laid across Michael’s lap, on the sagging sofa, and Harold had thrown a pillow at him for his unwanted opinion._

_“Well, I happen to believe in that institution. Even if it’s not fashionable. So boo.”_

_“Boo?” Alex laughed._

_“One of you guys back me up here. You don’t want to get married someday?”_

_“If you’re asking, big fella.”_

_“Sam, come on.” Harold rolled his eyes. A sure sign he was serious about the subject, or he’d have played along, Michael thought._

_“Sure, maybe. Who knows? If I like it I might do it three or four times.” Sam joked, and Nick just gave a non-committal shrug._

_“I probably won’t.” Michael had said, toying with the front of Alex’ hair._

_“Sure you will.” Alex, his eyes zeroed right in on Michael’s, like he could have seen straight through to his soul, and to all the things they never talked about. Like things they felt or the fact that it would all end with graduation. They never did let themselves cross certain lines, never let the lovely, fragile thing between them grow into something the real world might crush._

_“Nah. I’m not that lucky.”_

_“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”_

_“If you do it, I’ll do it. How’s that? You, uh, can’t tell me to do something you don’t, don’t believe in.”_

_“No. I guess I can’t.”_

_And they hadn’t talked about that, either, once the conversation moved on. Just another link in an endless chain of things not to acknowledge when they didn’t have their hands on each other._

“Bullshit. What happened to her, then, that you’re running around footloose and fancy free?”

“Died.” He shrugs again.

“Fuck, that’s grim. Michael, is there anyone in your life who hasn’t died on you?”

“You’re still here.” He dares a glance over to where Sam’s messing with his luggage, not quite inclined to go.

“Yeah.” Sam reaches over, squeezing his shoulder. “Come out to California sometime. Stay with me a couple days. Any time.”

“I will.” He stands when Sam does. “We ought to, we ought to get going, uh, before Sarah comes and chases us off her porch… We’ve already said all the, all the goodbyes I think there are.”

Sam pulls him into a hug this time, like he had before the funeral, the only one who had then. Michael clings to him.


	14. Getting Away With It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt 'Victory', on the fandomweekly DW comm.
> 
> College boys.

I’m barely aware that we’ve won before a very solid weight hits me, and I catch myself until a second very solid weight joins in and the three of us hit the ground.

The problem is, once I’ve kissed Alex, I can’t not kiss Sam, because the three of us were a team, and Sam’s the first one to dogpile on top of me, and the fact that I sometimes kind of sort of kiss Alex isn’t really public information.

Only it is now, because I grabbed the back of his head and kissed him, the three of us were lying here in a heap laughing and I just, I did it. I did it.

It’s just…

It’s not about the game. It’s about the fact that graduation and the real world are just around the corner and maybe this is the last stupid game we play on this particular lawn, maybe we won’t have time to do this and even when we have time we’ll be in different cities mostly, and maybe we’d get together once a year if we can and do all kinds of dumb things together for a couple of days and then… not.

Winning is fine. In my limited experience with winning at these things, I like it, but it’s more…

It’s more that the future has been weighing on us so much the closer we get, and it’s so good to see him laugh, the past week and a half it’s felt so dark sometimes and that laugh is more of a victory than a lousy two points in one of those dumb games you play when you have enough people together and some loosely agreed-upon rules. And he’s so beautiful, not because he’s good-looking, but because of who he is, and I don’t know what I’ll do without him…

So with Sam half between us lying on the ground, I just did it. I kissed him. Full on the mouth, and at least there wasn’t any tongue or anything, it was half a second and we were both laughing, just…

I grab Sam and plant one on his cheek, and hope he doesn’t think to ask why I’d got Alex square on the mouth.

It’s just…

Alex is going back home after this, and he’ll be at his folks’ place a little while while he gets set up with a job, and… Well, of course I haven’t got that option. Not that I envy him that, not the… not the part where he’s staying with his parents, only the part where he has a hometown, and hate the neighborhood I grew up in. I hate being old enough to understand now the things I didn’t understand then, like being slowly ostracized from games with the neighborhood kids, and curtains drawn too tight, and nasty looks, and the last time I went home, the questions at their funeral, and fake sympathy and nosy assholes…

I’m going to New York, and I’m going to teach, and when I’m not teaching, I’m going to write, and someday I’ll just write, I’ll work for a paper and… and I’m not worried because I have a job lined up and there’s an apartment waiting, and I have money. If there was ever an emergency, selling my parents’ house means I’m set up okay, so if I ever had to freelance without having a steady job or flee the country or something I’d be _fine_ , it’s not that, it’s just…

It’s just that I’ll really miss living with Alex and with everybody. I’ll really miss moments like this. And I’m afraid he will, too.

Sam leans over and kisses Alex’ cheek, still laughing, and Alex leans down and kisses me again, and it’s still fast, but his tongue swipes at my lip before he pulls away and I can see the gleam in his eye…

“What are the three of you _doing_?” Harold asks, but it’s with a laugh, not with any kind of disapproval.

“Come down here and find out, big boy.” Sam says. Harold hauls him up to his feet instead, lets Sam plant a Bugs Bunny-esque theatrical smacker on him, and then chases him around the lawn, gets Nick back up on his feet as well, Nick is the one who winds up tackling Sam back down…

The other guys who’d joined in, a group from the house next door, they’ve disappeared somewhere after the game. It’s just as well-- anyone who wasn’t around when Sam taught us stage kissing would think something funny was going on in our co-op. Well, something is, just… not with the other guys. Nick and Sam are usually competing over girls, and Harold… well, Harold is Harold, it’s kind of unthinkable.

“I can’t believe you used _tongue_.” I hiss, Alex still lying on top of me, still grinning.

“Yes you can. You just can’t believe we got away with it.”

I roll him onto his back, pinning him-- maybe only thanks to the element of surprise, but still.

“Yeah.” I steal a quick peck. Before now, I’ve never… not outside of sex, always been afraid what we had couldn’t… But now, with the end on the horizon, what’s to lose? With the heady rush of having kissed him in front of everyone and no one even blinking, what’s to lose? “Here’s to getting away with it.”


	15. Surviving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU in which Alex is hospitalized after a suicide attempt and that's what brings everyone together-- or at least brings Michael out.

“I should have told you a long time ago.” Alex says. His voice is flat, his gaze fixed on the window, but not focused.

“I always thought I knew.” Michael undoes the restraints on one side, freeing an arm from the rail on the side of the bed. The bandaged side. “I mean… I thought we were the same. Sad, sometimes, sometimes not even up to being sad, but…”

“I thought so, too. Until you looked as surprised as everybody else. You’ve never wanted to?”

“No. Wish I’d never been born, sometimes, but… I’ve never had the impulse to…”

Everyone else had gone home for the night. Normally, visiting hours would prevent his spending the night here. One of the doctors had said it would be good to have someone there… but even then, Michael is pretty sure they’d frown on his undoing the restraints.

It’s just… there’s something so fucking depressing about them. Maybe the Vegas odds on trusting Alex right now aren’t good, but it’s not like he’s leaving him alone, and it’s not like there’s anything he could do…

“Are you allowed to uncuff me?”

“Sure, if no one finds out. It’s a radical new therapy method I like to call not making you feel like a prisoner for a little while.”

“Oh, that is radical.”

“All you have to do is not kill yourself tonight.” Michael says, and Alex laughs.

“I don’t know.”

“I know.” He presses an impulsive kiss to the bandages.

“I’ve got so many options, in this room where all the sharp objects have been removed, and there are no exposed beams where I can hang myself with my bedsheets. If I threw myself out that window, I don’t think the fall would kill me.”

“Alex…”

“Sorry. No one likes it when the suicidal guy jokes about suicide.”

“No, not that. That part I understand. I just mean… do you want me to undo the other side?”

Alex meets his eyes, gazes into them a long moment. “You know I had someone ask if this got it out of my system?”

“Wow.”

“You know it doesn’t work like that.”

It isn’t a question. It doesn’t need to be. Michael knows what it’s like, urge to kill himself aside. It comes and it goes, but it’s never really gone.

He undoes the other restraint.

“I don’t want to, but I still think about it.” He whispers. “Sometimes I think about it, but it’s not the same… it’s not what you have to live with.”

“Have to live with.” Alex snorts. “Why’d you come?”

“Harold called and said you were in the hospital. He said it was an accident.”

“Sorry he couldn’t just say it. Those delicate southern sensibilities… Or maybe he thought it wasn’t something he could say over the phone. Or I should be the one to tell you, I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“I came because I had to see you. I should have told you a long time ago, but you were always the best part of me. The nights we spent shutting the world out together… The times it was just us… I’ve never had anything since that meant to me what we did. And we haven’t spoken in so long… you don’t answer the phone. And I thought this way maybe you’d have to talk to me just for two minutes. Maybe that was stupid--”

“No.”

“I didn’t expect much. Just to see you. Just to hope you would remember me and… not even want something, just remember something.”

“I remember everything.” Alex takes his hand. Squeezes.

“It was a longshot--”

“No, it wasn’t. Michael, it wasn’t.”

“You haven’t wanted to talk to me--”

“More than anything. When I want anything at all. Lately I don’t… I want-- I want the absence of things. Michael… I’ve been planning this. A long time. And-- and things might pick up and I’d put that plan on hold, but-- I couldn’t let you in. When I had this plan. I couldn’t. Then I saw you… Michael, I’m always going to be this. Whatever you want… I’m always going to be this.”

“I know.” He leans forward, his fingers gently moving through Alex’ hair. “I remember things the way they were. We didn’t have it easy, but it was easier together than apart.”

“It was.”

“I’m just telling you… I want you to talk to me again. I still care about you… and you don’t need to feel anything, you don’t need to do anything special, you don’t need to follow me home-- you can. But I’m not asking that, I’m not… I’m not asking much. Just talk to me.”

“I’m not a lot of fun to live with.”

“Yes you are.” He kisses his wrist again. “As often as I am, anyway. Would you?”

“We did it once. We survived living together. I don’t know about me and surviving, but…”

“I know.” Michael smiles.

“Okay. Well, we’ll give it a shot.” Alex falls back against his pillow, closing his eyes. “I… I’m always going to be this, but… if you want to believe in me anyway, let’s give surviving a shot.”


	16. The Intimacy of Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For my 100prompts prompt table, the prompt in question being 'Funeral'. 
> 
> You can see how I couldn't resist.

It’s been years since Michael has felt anything as intimate as this, the heavy press of the casket to his shoulder. _Alex_. He’s seen him, he’s not sure what he would have done if he couldn’t have seen him, even though he hates how he’d looked.

Depressed, but maybe that was fitting.

He’s seen him, and yet with the casket closed, somehow Michael imagines him different.

If you want to talk about depressed-- or depressing-- how about the fact that this _is_ the most intimate thing Michael has done for someone in so long? Even with so much between them-- the casket, death. This is his burden. Their burden, the four of them, but he wishes it was his alone.

It should be his.

He can’t help that thought, that it should be his, that the thing they once had should have been more, that even with what it was, he should be afforded some kind of… something. Oh, yes, Chloe-- Alex had been with Chloe. But who is she? She let this happen. No, that’s… that’s highly uncharitable, she’s hurting, too. She didn’t know. But whatever she was, Alex never let her in, or she would have known about this.

Michael knew. Not that he would ever do it, no, he never… But he knew he was depressed. Even during good times, it was only ever waiting. He’d always known about that, he thinks he’s the only one who did.

He should have stayed with him, they should have fit their lives together after graduation, somehow. Even if he never acknowledged those unspoken feelings out loud, even if Alex couldn’t love him back, couldn’t want a future together that way, they should have stayed together. He should have been _there_. He should have been closest, and if he couldn’t have saved him, he should have had the final intimacy he craves. To have some _say_ in how he was treated at the end. No lousy attempts at making him look like himself that could only ever leave him looking sad. A winding sheet and Alex in his arms alone, his burden to bear, his to say goodbye to and surrender to the earth, because he had known him. He had known him.

It had been Alex at his side, when he’d eulogized his parents, when he’d gone to their grave for the first time. When he’d gone back a year later, too. Alex holding his hand, talking him through the pain of the loss, of an imperfect goodbye. Now, when it’s Alex he has to lay to rest, who could comfort him?

Annie didn’t come. He didn’t ask her to, but then, he hadn’t asked Alex… when it was his parents, when Alex was the friend he sometimes traded orgasms with, he hadn’t asked. Alex had talked about it like there was no question. Had just said to the others of course he would be taking Michael. Annie had been comforting, but she hadn’t volunteered to come, or even asked if he might want her there.

No one knows that Michael loved Alex once… that he never really stopped. He can’t tell them. He can’t change the way they remember him, he can’t… he can’t face the question of whether it would change how anybody looked at him. He’s not sure which is worse-- the idea of his friends turning their backs on him, or the idea of their remembering Alex less fondly, less warmly.

He didn’t get to bury his parents. The act of taking up a shovel, of throwing the first shower of dirt down. He’d forgotten how keen the regret was until the moment Sam hands him the shovel, and something deep inside him flinches, and he turns it over in his hands, sends three shovelfuls of dirt down.

There are things he dimly remembers, through the fog of grief and regret and envy. The loss of Alex, the fact that he hadn’t been able to help him, the fact that he can only ever be some friend from college-- not even worth remembering, the Marshalls didn’t even remember him. He remembers his parents’ death and how he’d struggled through everything after, and how Alex had been there. More dimly, he remembers when his grandfather had died, remembers in bits and pieces how it had been, drifting, confused, through a house of mourning… Rules and rituals, only half-remembered by the time he had to bury his own parents-- by the time he wasn’t able to bury them.

He can’t mourn Alex the way he wants to, the way he thinks Alex merits. He sinks the shovel back into the earth and leaves it to Nick, stumbles over to stand between Sam and Harold. If he was free to, would he throw himself down, sob, rend his clothing? He doesn’t think so, he’s not the type to. He’d been so embarrassed at his parents’ memorial service, when he was _supposed_ to cry, but he’d been a young man who’d never been able to outgrow self-consciousness…

If he were writing this… writing his mourning of Alex… He’d write the winding sheet, carrying and burying him alone, the crowd far behind, unimportant in the face of his grief, his connection. He would write himself lying upon the mound and weeping, and beating at the earth and tearing at his clothing. All the things he’s never been able to do when he should have, when he’s wished to. But he hasn’t written non-fiction since college, when he and Sam used to lie around the co-op living room banging out words and critiquing each other, back before Michael gave up on the idea of crafting fiction, and before Sam decided his own creativity was best channeled through words others had written.

If he were writing this, it would be raining. Light at first, and then heavier. The crowd would approach slowly, and circle the grave, and the world would watch him weep and they’d know. If he were writing this, he would make it all profound and poetic, instead of meaningless. He’d write a world where he could express his pain, instead of the one he lives in. The world where he retreats for a month, grows his beard back out, mourns the way Alex deserves to be mourned, or the way Michael deserves to mourn. He’s not sure which. He’s not sure it matters.

The real thing is never as poetic as you’d like. It’s just sad.


	17. I Guess They'll Never Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt 'Puppy Love'

They haven’t known each other long.

Gil, he… he’s sweet, but he doesn’t know Jack at his worst yet. And Jack doesn’t want Gil to see him at his worst, because he likes having this so much.

He likes that adoration Gil looks at him with sometimes, those blue eyes wide and shining. How Gil hangs off his every word and makes him feel like he’s _somebody_. No one else ever makes him feel like he’s _somebody_.

Sometimes, he puts an arm around him, and imagines that he could have this life, where a sweet guy like Gil could just… keep on looking at him that way.

He shouldn’t let Gil look at him like that. He shouldn’t let Gil relax into the crook of his arm with a soft sigh, shouldn’t let Gil fall asleep against his shoulder, shouldn’t let Gil hit every single button he’s got, with the way his silky hair hangs down over his forehead, with his wide, blue eyes, his guileless, open face… with hands as big as Jack’s own, a long, lean body that would line right up against his own like the perfect fit, if he were ever to take Gil in his arms… how helpless he’d be without Jack to take care of him, the way he looks in a sweater… with the sound of his voice, the slight lisp, the shape of his mouth, how his upper lip is slightly fuller and just…

Just perfect. Just the kind of lip you’d want to spend a long time nibbling on, but Jack’s got rules for himself, and one of those is about what he is and isn’t allowed to do with a guy’s lips, and Gil…

Gil has had an innocent adoration for him ever since the first time Jack put him back on his feet, and ever since he’s been…

Great.

It’s just… the things Jack wants from him, even if Gil wanted them too, he can’t…

And maybe if Gil was just cute and sweet and helpless, if he just sometimes looked at Jack like Jack hung the moon, maybe he could still be safe, but the thing about Gil, the real thing, the vital, important, devastating thing…

He’s so good at research. He’s tireless, he’ll sit long hours poring over books, his head will pop up with a ‘HA!’ when he’s found the little piece of information he’d searched for… he takes notes in shorthand, writing as he reads, he dives into the stacks at the library and waves off anyone who thinks they can tell him something he doesn’t know about where things are kept… The sight of him going over microfiche makes Jack weak in the _knees_.

And he’s going to waste it all on Sensation!. He talks about his father’s paper as an inevitability, and Jack supposes it is. It’s the reason he came to study journalism, it’s the thing he always knew he’d do with his life. No one’s ever asked Gil what he _wanted_ to do, they just told him what he _would_ do. No wonder he’s so helpless now, when it comes to taking care of himself, he’s used to life in captivity… but Jack was raised for self-sufficiency. Not in any neglectful way, far from it. He’d been carefully and lovingly taught to be someone who could take care of himself. He can cook, keep house, he’s nobody’s sucker, knows how to handle his finances-- such as they are-- a fair amount of self-defense for a guy who isn’t likely to get into many fights, or at least hopes not to be, and a few things he really doesn’t think he’ll ever need, but he knows what to do if he does.

So really, Gil needs him. And he doesn’t want to be everyone else, telling him where to go and what to do, but he wants to take care of him. He needs to take care of him.

He just wishes he could figure out which of them wants something the other can’t give, because some days he really isn’t sure anymore.


	18. Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the fandomweekly prompt 'Unexpected Company'
> 
> Michael drove all night to arrive earlier than expected. Harold may have neglected to mention he was to be expected at all. (A stab at the same AU as before-- Alex in hospital rather than dead. Can take place just before 'Survival' or just be a variation on the theme, though this one definitively removes Chloe from the story)

“Were you there when it happened?”

Harold nods. “Upstairs. We almost didn’t know in time. He’s been under heavy sedation… His parents haven’t gotten here yet, I’d have thought-- Anyway. After them I called you. I don’t know anyone else kept in touch with him.”

Michael shrugs. He’d driven non-stop. He’d assumed a workplace accident, the way Harold had broken the news over the phone. Seeing the bandages, he knows that’s not what it is…

“Tried to.” He says. “You know, he used to leave the bathroom door open, most of the time… when we, um, lived together.”

“I would never have guessed… I would never have guessed he might…”

“I didn’t think… like this.” Michael touches Alex’ face. Feels him just barely stir, leaning into it. “More like… when it got bad, he wouldn’t, uh, wouldn’t be sorry if he got... hit by a bus crossing the street. But that’s different from doing it, you know?”

“Is it?”

“ _Yeah_.” He whispers.

Alex’ eyes flutter open. He shifts, frowning as he realizes he’s restrained, and then taking in Michael’s face at last.

“What are you doing here?”

“Came to see you.”

“Well, if I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake.” He says, though there’s no sparkle. Still, that he’d responded with an attempt at humor, that has to mean something. He’s seen him without that sparkle before, countless times, and he’s seen him sitting there, on days when he was without any of his own. Not that he thinks he ever had the kind of spark to him Alex did. He’d hide dull days under false cheer, but Michael always did know.

“Sorry I dropped in unexpectedly, then.”

“Don’t be.” Alex’ arm jerks, stopped by the leather cuff around his wrist from reaching for Michael.

“I asked him.” Harold says. “I’m going to go and let Sarah know you’re up…”

“I don’t really know what to say.” Alex says, as the door clicks softly shut behind him, and he and Michael are left alone. “Maybe if I’d picked up the phone once or twice, this wouldn’t be so…”

“I-- I’m glad Harold asked me, I wanted to see you. If you don’t want me to stay…”

“I want you.”

Michael slips his hand into Alex’, nodding, jaw working a long moment. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed… everyone, but you… Alex.”

They belong together. He thinks he’s always known it. Afraid to act on it, once, but if Alex wants him…

When the door opens, he doesn’t take his hand away. He doesn’t think he’d have had the strength to, with Alex holding tight to him. He’s not sure he’d have had the strength even if Alex wasn’t holding on very tight at all…

“Missed you, too.” Alex nods. There’s something beyond that dull emptiness of depression in his eyes. The light moves in them, in a way that suggests he’s not in the same extreme low he must have hit, even if he’s not far out of it. The blue of them always looked like a summer sky, on a good day. On a bad day, ice.

Despite the weariness, the past ten years have been good to him… back in college, he’d had the power to summon incredible charisma at times, but he wasn’t what you’d call attractive. There’d been something awkward about the way his face fit together. But then, Michael had felt pretty awkward himself most of the time, features too strong here to be pretty, too delicate there to be handsome. Now, though, Michael’s not sure what he’s settled into himself, but Alex has become… rugged. Something Michael might not have imagined, back when he was studying physics. Something that suits him, now.

“Excuse me--”

Michael turns, his contemplation of Alex’ features broken.

“Sarah, hi.” He greets, smile small, tentative.

“Michael came.” Harold prompts, and the recognition hits. He guesses they haven’t seen each other so long-- he looked pretty different then, himself, though Sarah still looks so much like herself.

“Michael.” She nods. There’s not much warmth, but he can’t imagine he blames her, worrying about Alex has to be at the forefront of her mind. She can’t have expected any more than Harold had that he would drop his entire life and drive through the night to arrive so quickly.

“It’s good to see you.”

“Yes, right-- thank you for coming out. Where are you staying, do you know yet?”

“With us.” Harold’s brow furrows.

Which would be nice, he hadn’t thought about where he would stay once he heard the words ‘Alex’ and ‘hospital’.

“Harold, we don’t have room, we’re putting up Alex’ parents…”

“It’s a big house, I’m sure--”

“You can put him in the basement.” Alex says. Even quiet as he is, he has everyone’s attention from word one.

“I don’t mind a basement.” Michael nods.

“While you’re here, but--”

“Please, it’s fine. When I get out, too.” He turns his smile, weak but not hopeless, towards Michael. “Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve squeezed in together. You always kept me accountable.”

“Michael’s a grown man now, I’m sure he doesn’t want--” Sarah starts.

“I want.” He squeezes Alex’ hand. “As long as I’m here.”

“Wouldn’t be a bad idea.” Harold says. Sarah doesn’t look like she agrees, exactly, but she doesn’t argue the point.

If he’s honest, Michael doesn’t just want this. He wants Alex back, wants the life they never did promise each other once upon a time. But if he can’t ask for that, at least there’s this.


	19. Hometown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For fandomweekly's schadenfreude challenge, and also an excuse for me to work with some of my extensive headcanons about Michael's childhood and upbringing, though with a thousand words or less I could never get it all out at once... I think about this boy Too Much.

He feels guilty, he does feel guilty. But the guilt doesn’t erase the bone-deep satisfaction he feels when he hears about Mr. Jones’ arrest.

Normally, Michael doesn’t swing through the old neighborhood. He doesn’t like to. Michael lives in New York, and most of the time people assume he’s from there. Unless he displays some ignorance as to where in town something is, no one assumes he’s not. He’s not sure how he feels about that-- on the one hand, he loves the city and he feels safer and more comfortable living there than he ever imagined feeling… on the other hand, he comes from a place very un-like New York City in every way, and it seems strange that people don’t see it written on him. Well, some people do.

He doesn’t have to go past his old neighborhood, when he visits his parents. The cemetery is a long way out from the block where he grew up. Mostly, he’d always been grateful for that. Neighbors had come to the memorial service, and he had hated it. Them. They hadn’t known his family, not really. These people offering him condolences had been the same people who’d quietly encouraged their children not to be too close with him. Not that the neighborhood kids liked him much, because he was a little weird, was always writing things down, because he got glasses in fourth grade, though he barely needed them back then. Through college, he could do all right with or without them, though his mother always told him he was making his eyesight worse not wearing them. Because he latched onto you too much if you were nice to him. Because… Because. But it was fine for kids not to like him because he was weird, it wasn’t fine for their parents to encourage his exclusion.

Those were the days, he supposes. He doesn’t miss them.

This time, his annual visit, he’d gone past the general area. Not the street where he once lived, not the house he sold to a family that would fit right into the cookie cutter suburb, but to the corner store that hadn’t changed much since the days before he was born and might not change for decades yet. That was where he’d learned that Mr. Jones from across the street had been steadily embezzling money from his job since ‘49. Michael remembers him as red-faced and unpleasant, and quick to accuse others of greed, which might have been guilt at work. He remembers the Jones girl, four or five years his junior, and how she’d asked at the memorial service if he’d been left a lot of money.

He can’t help thinking about it. When he starts to feel guilty for taking some pleasure in the news, he thinks about how blank her face had been, how she hadn’t seemed to understand that he was suffering, how she hadn’t thought about what it must be like to be pulled out of your college studies to be told you’re an orphan with a lot of work to do. They’d only really seemed to care about material things, like they didn’t have any concept of anything that couldn’t be put into numbers. There was no monetary value assigned to Michael’s parents. The Joneses did talk to his parents, but it was shallow and brief and always left Michael feeling a vague sense of discomfort whenever he bore witness to it. They weren’t the rudest family, in that sense, but somehow it was worse to be talked to.

He doesn’t think the Jones girl really appreciates the simple fact that she’ll get her father _back_ , she’ll get him _back_. If she’s like she was four years ago, she’s upset about all the money that was seized.

“Are you ready to go?” Alex asks, breaking him out of his own thoughts-- of course the overheard local gossip wouldn’t mean anything to him, though he’d met the Joneses at the service. He’s leaning against the counter up front, chocolate bar in hand-- the one Michael had been fruitlessly searching for in the space it should have occupied, where there was only an empty box.

“You had it all along?”

He waves it in the air. “Come on. You’re in an unusually good mood, considering.”

“Am I?” He asks, though he guesses he means ‘does it show?’, and apparently it does. “Beautiful day, I guess.”

“Sure.” Alex snorts. Outside, it’s stopped drizzling, but the late autumn rains have turned the dead leaves into brown mush on the ground, and there’s no sun to speak of.

In the car, he doesn’t turn the key right away.

“I mean I’m glad you are.” He says. “You’re allowed to feel good today. I always used to… I’d worry. We’d make this trip and I’d imagine you walking into the nearest lake instead of into the cemetery.”

“Our old neighbor got arrested.”

“... Oh.”

“He was an asshole.”

“Cool.” Alex turns the key.

“They’ll take back all the money he stole over the years.” Michael continues. “I’m going to call his daughter later and ask her isn’t she glad he still has his _health_.”

“Oh, _that_ neighbor.” He snickers, not at all put off by Michael’s vicious streak, not remembering the service and the question. “Yeah, do that.”

“You know I’d-- the, uh… You know you don’t have to worry about me.”

“I know, but I worry.”

“Well, ah, knock it off, will you? Just drive.”

“I’ll drive, if you’ll tell me more about how terrible your ex-neighbor the future jailbird is.”

“Okay, well, you’re aware I never come back this way if I can help it…” Michael begins. They do have a long drive in which to indulge himself in a little mean-spirited glee.


	20. Video

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody asked for this Mild Filth but here it is anyway.

The tape was partly used, and so it had only made sense to Sidney at the time to check that, being unlabeled, it wasn't something that couldn't be repurposed. Just to video some rehearsal for self-critique, because he'd never needed to know how he _looked_ before, only how he sounded, but that's changed.

He's immediately grateful to be alone in the room only a few seconds into the thing. The angle has been... _very_ carefully chosen. The naked man who slides into frame never once has his head on camera as he positions himself. The bedroom could be any in the bunkhouse, nothing jumps out as being somebody's. The anonymity is really only spoiled by the fact that Sidney has already spent a staggering amount of time looking at Perfect Tommy's torso, and given the number of photoshoots and performances he takes his shirt off for, he's become well acquainted with the distinctive pattern of beauty marks, the couple of faint scars he's seen Tommy cover with makeup in dressing rooms...

His ass looks exactly as good as imagined. The lack of a tan line is doing something to the part of Sidney's brain that should be telling him to stop the tape, pop it out, and label it 'TOMMY- PRIVATE', then never look the man in the eye again. He was fully hard before he ever came into view, and Sidney should definitely... he should definitely turn it off, but it's not like he's ever going to unsee what he's seen, it's not like he won't be picturing the exact curve and angle when he closes his eyes, not like he doesn't know the exact level of redness he flushes to, the way he moves. Not like he'll ever be able to hear a grunt of honest exertion and not think about this...

He doesn't lock the door. If he locks the door, he's admitting that he's watching this on purpose, to get something out of it.

He does move his hat into his lap.

On the screen, Perfect Tommy rolls his hips, grinds into the bedspread, and for a brief and very guilty moment, Sidney imagines his own bedspread, his own bed, Tommy there...

He stops the tape, better angels winning out at last. He sits in the dark and he thinks about performing a craniotomy in the most precise detail he can, he thinks about every detail of the operating room and everything he'd be doing, and all the highly unsexy things about neurosurgery, until he feels like he can rejoin polite society.

Polite society, in this case, is Perfect Tommy, who he runs into by the coffeepot. Well. He might as well get this over with.

"Perfect Tommy, hi. Hello. Uh, good morning."

"... Morning, Doc." Tommy's smile is bemused at first, the same kind of polite 'what's his deal' look Sidney had gotten on first meeting him, but then he sees the tape and it curls into something smugly _knowing_. "Can I help you with something?"

"Oh-- oh, no. Actually, I was-- ha, see--"

Tommy gets him down a mug and pours him a cup, before sliding over to let him reach to add as much or as little sugar as he likes. "You want cream?"

"Thanks, thanks, yes. I had-- I was-- I needed the camera, for a-- for something, unimportant. And I wondered if you... needed... this."

He takes the tape from Sidney, hands brushing, and Sidney doesn't half understand the journey his smirk makes as he examines it. He doesn't half understand Tommy handing the tape _back_. He takes it, jaw hanging open, because he doesn't really know what else to do. Tommy grabs the pitcher of cream from the mini fridge down the counter from the coffeepot, adding a dollop to his own mug and then hovering over Sidney's.

"You didn't finish. Say when."

"What? Oh-- uh-- when. Thanks. What?"

"There's more." He taps the tape. "If you're interested. And... if you weren't interested, it'd be wound back further than it is. Am I right?"

Sidney might just die, right here, and that would be a shame, because someone would have to clean up the shattered coffee mug, there'd be coffee everywhere, and the tape, and... well, and him, he reckons. That would be a shame, too, being dead, but it's very difficult to think about. It's very difficult to think at all, with the tape back in his hand, with Tommy casually pouring cream and coffee for him as if he hadn't been watching something very personal-- Tommy casually suggesting he watch more of it, in fact. Difficult to think with Tommy casually standing very close, leaning against the counter looking like he'd stepped out of a catalog, crisp plaid slacks and perfectly-polished wingtips, and a shirt that's _almost_ a tuxedo shirt, except for the short sleeves, the cuffs of which hug his biceps, and it's so _white_ against the deep golden peach of his skin, the top couple of buttons open and the collar spread wide, and he's beautiful, sure, but that...

That's not why Sidney wants him in his bed. Although, it doesn't hurt.

"You'd, uh, you'd be okay with me watching? It didn't seem right to, without an invite..."

"Consider yourself invited."

Sidney has faced down literal evil space aliens, holding a gun he barely knew how to handle, and somehow he was less nervous than he is right now. But, he reminds himself, he'd _done_ it. He'd gone in, he'd aimed, he'd fired, he'd survived. He remembers Tommy reaching out to hand him his backup, their eyes meeting, it had only been one brief moment, neither of them could spare the attention to each other then, but he remembers how he'd felt then and he thinks... if he got through that, he'll get through anything.

"Well, thank you, but... I was actually wondering, is there a live show?"

Tommy's grin is dazzling, but not the kind of dazzling that he turns on audiences. His cheeks go just a little pink, in fact.

"A live show?"

"Something with, uh, ha, audience participation?"

"Yeah." Tommy nods, seems maybe as shy as Sidney feels. "There might be something like that."


	21. Failing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for fandomweekly's 'missed the mark' challenge.

Oh.

No.

Alex struggles to make sense of the face he’s staring at. The mess of dirty blond hair, the slightly unfocused blue eyes. The shape, narrow but not thin, the planes of it. It was the kind of face that would look handsome if it smiled, but not when it isn’t.

It hasn’t looked handsome, he doesn’t think, in a while.

It’s his, but he doesn’t feel anything about it.

The things he does feel come in fits and starts.

He’s very drunk.

Not too drunk to be careful.

If he’s lucky, the scar will be neat. The scar will be neat, that is, if he has one. If he’s lucky, he’s going to have one. If he’s lucky, he thinks, desperately, he could have a scar for fifty or sixty years. The last ten months, he hasn’t wanted _anything_ , and then he’d decided he wanted one very specific thing, the last thing he thought he’d ever want, and now he wants this. To spend the next fifty or sixty years with a scar.

He wants the scar, and he wants whatever ulcer the pills might give him, and he wants… he’ll figure out what else he wants.

It hadn’t hurt until he’d wrapped the towel around it and suddenly there was pain, but he thinks he wants that, too, it’s _something_ , and maybe he’ll remember it, maybe he’ll remember that he fucked this up and he didn’t like it and he doesn’t _want_ this, not really. He wanted and then he didn’t and he fucked it all up, he fucked it all up, but he’s glad he did, because he wants he wants he wants…

He wants to go stargazing.

He wants to sit by the water somewhere and not think about anything.

He wants to go to the library and spend all day there and think about everything.

He wants to call everyone he knows even if he doesn’t know what he’ll say.

He wants to get a dog. Or a cat. Or a fish. Or a plant. It doesn’t matter, but a thing, a life he actually cares about being responsible for.

He wants to go dancing.

He wants more things than he thinks he’s wanted in a year, in two years, and he’s never been so hideously grateful to have failed in his life.

At least, he thinks he’s failing. He turns away from the pale, horrified man standing dazed in his bathroom and he makes himself dial just three digits on the phone, it shouldn’t be so hard except he’s using one of his hands to hold a towel tight around the opposite wrist and trying not to think about the wet heat against his palm, but he thinks he’s failing.

He tries not to think about the smears of red he leaves, on the telephone handset, on the memo pad, on the pencil, as he leaves a barely legible note. He wasn’t going to leave one, for if he’d succeeded. This is one for when he fails. Because failing, he thinks, is going to be a long, hard process, and he doesn’t think he can keep failing alone.

_H- Bring Michael_ , the note reads. No one else is going to understand. Michael is.

He’d taken Michael’s razor once. Hidden his own. When his parents had died, and he’d grown that beard, and they’d been in vogue so no one had questioned it. They hadn’t discussed it, either, but he’d gotten rid of Michael’s razor when he’d seen him the morning after the news, seen him pick it up and then put it down a little too fast and hard without shaving. He’d watched him like a hawk the first few days, and still watched him close for that first year. And the beard had stayed, had just become normal Michael.

He should have given him the opportunity to return the favor, instead of cutting him out.

He wants, more than anything, to give him the opportunity now to return the favor, next time.


	22. Enough Pie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fandomweekly's overindulgence challenge. College years, established couple.

“This was a mistake. I’m going to die.” Alex groans, commandeering Michael’s thigh to use as a pillow.

“Take me with you. I’m never eating again.”

“If you die and I die, who arranges the funeral?”

“If you think I’m arranging your funeral, you can just think again.” He flicks Alex’ ear, and gets a contrite if awkwardly-angled squeeze to the knee. “Make Sam do it. Sam!”

Sam leans in the doorway. “The two of you are really going to take up that whole couch, huh?”

“That’s all him.” Michael says. “Sam, we’re entrusting you with arranging the funeral when our stomachs explode. We would like to be buried together. Just scrape us into the same box and dump us in a hole and give a really good eulogy.”

“No one forced you to eat that much pie.” He shakes his head. “You’ll live.”

“Boo.” Alex lets one arm flop dramatically down to dangle from the couch.

“How do you want to do our joint funeral?” Michael asks, opting to ignore Sam’s assertion that they will, in fact, live.

“Well, for starters, we’ll both be dead. Unless you want to fling yourself on my funeral pyre.”

“My parents would not approve of a funeral pyre.”

“Would they have approved of the part where you and I are having a joint funeral?” Alex opens one eye.

“Before they’d approve of a funeral pyre.”

“Has anyone ever told you you guys are sick?” Sam sighs.

“It’ll have to be a secular funeral, of course. One of those modern city hall funerals.”

“Of course. They’ll bury us somewhere nice and unconsecrated.” Michael runs his fingers through Alex’ hair.

“Sick.” Sam repeats.

“What’s sick?” Harold asks, ambling into the room and-- finding the couch occupied-- dropping into a battered armchair.

“We’re planning our eternal union in death. After the pie kills us, we’ll be buried together in a random field.”

“I don’t think you’re allowed to bury people in random fields.”

“Unconsecrated ground.” Michael elaborates.

“You don’t want to start an eternity together without the presence of God. The rock, the foundation, that all joint burials are based on.”

“He’d have to convert.” Michael says.

“And we’ve already eaten enough pie to kill two men, so it’s really too late to start the process.” Alex adds.

After a bit of fumbling, their hands find each other, without either of them looking.

“Would you be willing to convert so that we could get buried?” Michael asks, with an overwrought sigh and an air of ridiculous melodrama.

“Baby, for you? I’d do _anything_.”

“... That would be sweet, if it wasn’t wrong on every level.” Harold shakes his head. “Sam, how come you never say anything romantic like that to me anymore?”

“Because your girlfriend just laughs at us when I do.”

Alex huffs softly, and brings Michael’s hand to rest over his heart. He can’t _complain_ , exactly, that Harold and Sam assume they just play around at it together. Sam’s used to the way the guys in the theatre department joke, and Harold is… well, Harold’s Harold, and he’s theatrical himself, and he’ll go along with any joke the rest of them are all enjoying, it’s just…

It’s just weird sometimes to not be joking, when everyone around them is too straight to realize. And right now it’s all a joke, but he likes the idea of an eternity together. Even if their bodies aren’t them. Maybe they’ll be reincarnated together somewhere. He’s decided to believe in reincarnation. It’s hard to believe in his parents’ picture of heaven, a place with old bearded guys in robes and winged cherubs and streets of gold and no homosexuals. But he and Michael could be reincarnated as anything together. Just do it all over again, and maybe next time around they’ll both find it easier to be happy.

Michael doesn’t know what happens when you die. He thought about it for the first time only a couple years back, and he’d like to believe it’s something nice. That some part of you remains somewhere and that there’s no suffering, that you still exist as energy in the universe or something. He’d like for the afterlife to be a place you go. He’d like to see his parents again.

“You know if we went out and bought another pie, those two would eat it for breakfast.” Sam says to Harold.

“No. Never again.” Alex insists. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

“I don’t want to think about breakfast. And I’ve sworn off pie for life.” Michael says.

“... Just the whipped cream, though, I would eat.”

“Obviously, ah, when I say I’ve sworn off, sworn off pie, I’m not counting _cheesecake_. Some distant day.”

“Mm… you know what I’d eat for breakfast?”

“Please don’t talk to me about breakfast yet.”

“Coffee. In bed. With a scoop of ice cream in it. And I bought blintzes… and they really won’t be as good if we don’t eat them tomorrow morning…” Alex squeezes Michael’s hand.

“I really will die if you start feeding me blintzes.”

“ _Good_ , we’ll go out together in a blaze of glory. Or blueberry.”

“Don’t even say ‘blueberry’. I want our headstone to say we died as we lived.”

“Lying in bed, full of pastry, putting off studying for our exams. Michael Asher Gold, make me the happiest corpse on earth. Let’s get buried.”

“Aww…”

“Really, you guys, that is morbid.”

“We get so much more morbid than this.” Michael says, tone soft, too caught up in gazing down into Alex’ eyes to think about much else. He goes back to playing with his hair. “We should have a long engagement so we can finish school, but of course the answer is yes.”

“Take me to bed. The impending food coma is as close to death as we’re getting tonight.”

“For a while.”

“For a while.” Alex agrees, a whispered promise. There’s some comfort found in the jokes, but heaven-- or whatever the alternative is-- can wait.


End file.
